Hillary Clinton unveils $350-bn plan for students

Walker also responded to Clinton’s new plan to make higher education available to everyone, and her comments on his record on education as Governor of Wisconsin. But it comes with a hefty price tag: $350 billion over 10 years.

To help make the case for her plan, she singled out Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker during Tuesday’s town hall, saying the Republican presidential candidate delighted in cutting money for higher education in his state. The campaign aims to galvanize voters by tapping into Americans’ anxiety over rising college costs and student loan debt levels. More than 70 percent of likely voters support debt-free college, according to a January poll by GBA Strategies on behalf of the Progressive Change Institute.

Leading her party in the polls, Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has now proposed an expansive program aimed at enabling students to attend public colleges and universities without taking on loans for tuition, according to a report in the WSJ. Under both proposals, low-income students would be able to use federal Pell grants to pay for living expenses. “For many students, it would translate into debt-free tuition”, said Carmel Martin, executive vice president for policy at the Center for American Progress, who advised Clinton on the plan.

“We need federal leverage and incentives to keep states in the public higher education business”, he told me.

Jeb Bush says the plan will just “shift the burden to hardworking taxpayers”. And it would offer support for college students who are parents. She released her plan for college affordability. -Schools will have to control their costs and show more accountability to their students.

“Barmak Nassirian, director of federal policy analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities, said he overall thinks that “[this] is a very positive plan touching on many pieces of the puzzle…it’s good that it encourages state investment in colleges and universities. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), it also incorporates bipartisan policies like risk-sharing, which penalizes colleges when too many graduates default on their loans.

One big takeaway from all this is that college affordability may have become the mainstream, crowd-pleasing middle-class issue of the moment, like homeownership or Social Security or health care in previous eras. And the plan’s rollout is timed to coincide with college students heading back to school, potentially luring a voting bloc critical for President Barack Obama that Clinton needs to court as well.

Sandy Baum, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute who was consulted by the campaign as it drafted the plan, said there was reason to be optimistic some elements could be adopted, either as part of the debate over a new Higher Education Act reauthorization now underway in Congress, or through separate legislation. She also favors Obama’s two-year, “free” community college proposal for qualifying students, and would cap student loan debt repayment at 10 percent of a borrower’s income. “We urge her to reconsider her plan and protect the full scope and value of the charitable deduction”. Families still would be required to contribute, but students wouldn’t have to take out loans to attend public schools.

“You’re showering people with money who don’t necessarily need it and are struggling in order to make the problem go away for people who actually need a bit of help”, said Jason Delisle, director of the Federal Education Budget Project at the New America Foundation. Students in the early voting state of New Hampshire face some of the highest in-state tuition rates in the country, she noted at a campaign stop this week.

Clinton also would reduce the interest rate that the federal government charges for Stafford loans, to a point where the program would break even, rather than generate a profit to the Treasury.

One might wonder why, when we borrow 40% of the money the federal government spends, that we’re discussing a $350 billion plan at all for anything except defense.