HIGHER EDUCATION
Why Americans Can’t Have Free College Tuition
A vocal minority is determined to prevent it, for really weird reasons.
The cultural debate over whether college should be free for all Americans is mostly on pause for now. Since Joe Biden won the nomination for president over Bernie Sanders in 2020, the subject has largely left the national conversation.
That’s a little surprising, since a huge majority of Democrats still favor making college free for everybody, and even when those numbers are combined with Republicans, 63 percent of all Americans are in favor of making college tuition free according to a 2021 report from the Pew Research Center.
In spite of clear public support, especially among Democrats, a majority of Democratic politicians seem to oppose using government money to fully subsidize college tuition. For a long time now, lawmakers have made it their job to make life harder instead of easier for regular people, so we continue to have all of these barriers to success and happiness. They feel no urgency and lack the courage to enact such a sweeping change, and the opponents of free college seem to have won the debate for now despite being in the minority.
