January 20,
2015, DAVID BROOKS
All college
commencements are happy, but community-college commencements are the happiest
of all. Many of the graduates are the first in their extended family to have
earned degrees. When their name is read, big cheering sections erupt with horns
and roars from the stands. Many students are older; you'll see 50- or
60-year-old women grasping their diplomas awash in happy tears. The graduates
often know exactly where they're going to work; they walk with an extra sense
of security as they head off campus.
These bright
days serve as evidence that America can live up to its dream of social
mobility, that there is hope at a time when the ladder upward seems creaky and
inadequate.
So when
President Obama unveils his community-college plan in the State of the Union
address Tuesday night, it represents an opportunity -- an opportunity to create
days like that for more students.
Obama's
headline idea is to make community college free. It would reduce two years of
tuition costs to zero for students with decent grades and who graduate within
three years.
The evidence
from a similar program in Tennessee suggests that the simple free label has an
important psychological effect. Enrollment there surged when high school
students learned that they could go to community college for nothing.
The problem is
that getting students to enroll is neither hard nor important. The important
task is to help students graduate. Community college drop out rates now hover
somewhere between 66 percent and 80 percent.
Spending $60
billion over 10 years to make community college free will do little to reduce
that. In the first place, community college is already free for most poor and
working-class students who qualify for Pell grants and other aid. In 2012, 38
percent of community-college students had their tuition covered entirely by
grant aid and an additional 33 percent had fees of less than $1,000.
The Obama plan
would largely be a subsidy for the middle- and upper-middle-class students who
are now paying tuition and who could afford to pay it in the years ahead.
The smart
thing to do would be to scrap the Obama tuition plan. Students who go to
community college free now have tragically high dropout rates. The $60 billion
could then be spent on things that are mentioned in President Obama's proposal
-- but not prioritized or fleshed out -- which would actually increase
graduation rates.
First, you'd
focus on living expenses. Tuition represents only a fifth of the costs of
community-college life. The bulk is textbooks, housing, transportation and so
on. Students often have to take on full-time or near-full-time jobs to cover
the costs, and, once they do that, they're much more likely to lose touch with
college.
You'd
subsidize guidance counselors and mentors. Community colleges are not sticky places.
Many students don't have intimate relationships with anyone who can guide them
through the maze of registration, who might help bond them to campus.
You'd figure
out the remedial education mess. Half of all community-college students arrive
unprepared for college work. Remedial courses are supposed to bring them up to
speed, but it's not clear they work, so some states are dropping remediation,
which could leave even more students at sea.
You'd focus on
child care. A quarter of college students nationwide have dependent children.
Even more students at community colleges do. Less than half of community
colleges now have any day-care facilities. Many students drop out because
something happens at home and there's no one to take care of the kids.
In short, you
wouldn't write government checks for tuition. You'd strengthen structures
around the schools. You'd focus on the lived environment of actual students and
create relationships and cushions to help them thrive.
We've had two
generations of human capital policies. Human Capital 1.0 was designed to give
people access to schools and other facilities. It was based on the 1970s
liberal orthodoxy that poor people just need more money, that the government
could write checks and mobility will improve.
Human Capital
2.0 is designed to help people not just enroll but to complete school and
thrive. Its based on a much more sophisticated understanding of how people
actually live, on the importance of social capital, on the difficulty of living
in disorganized circumstances. The new research emphasizes noncognitive skills
-- motivation, grit and attachment -- and how to use policy levers to boost
these things.
The tuition piece of the Obama proposal is Human
Capital 1.0. It is locked in 1970s liberal orthodoxy. Congress should take the
proposal, scrap it and rededicate the money toward programs that will actually
boost completion, that will surround colleges, students and their families with
supporting structures. We don't need another program that will lure students
into colleges only to have them struggle and drop out.
