Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is calling for tuition-free public colleges and universities nationwide, arguing the move would force private schools to rein in skyrocketing costs.
She made the case Sunday at a “Students vs. Billionaires Town Hall,” hosted by More Perfect Union, after being asked what she and the Democratic Party are doing to keep higher education affordable for middle and low-income families. The question followed news that Cornell University has now broken $100,000 a year in tuition.
Ocasio-Cortez said she was stunned by the figure, calling it “far more than what many households make in a year in this country.”
She argued that many colleges and universities are operating less like schools and more like real estate ventures. “What a lot of colleges and universities do with their funds is more of a real estate investment strategy, than an educational strategy,” she said, pointing to new buildings and facilities “often marketed as luxury” even as adjunct faculty are “barely paid a living wage” and the quality of instruction declines.
Ocasio-Cortez also took aim at how federal financial aid gets used. “What we need to do is increase accountability, because a lot of these schools receive federal funds. Sometimes, what they do is that they’ll charge you $100,000 so that you can get a lot of that financial aid to increase the number of financial aid that someone may get to attend that institution. That money needs to be tied to investments in education, not investments in people’s bottom lines. Especially your tax dollars,” she said.
“The best thing that we can do to rein in runaway cost at private institutions is by having fixed, affordable, high-quality services of public institutions. Which means, tuition-free public colleges and universities across the United States of America.”
Anticipating pushback, Ocasio-Cortez said the idea isn’t a far-left fantasy but a return to a policy the country already had. “For anyone who wants to say that that’s pie in the sky and unrealistic and just another expensive, progressive wish list, this is literally what baby boomers gave themselves,” she said. “Public colleges in America were tuition free, they were tuition free in the sixties and in the seventies.”
She then tied the end of free public college to racial integration. “And, just like many things, like public housing and public education, you know when they started to get defunded? They got defunded when they started to get integrated, racially integrated,” she said.
Ocasio-Cortez has previously said she supports free college for all children in the United States, including those from wealthy families.
