Money Magazine is out with a new poll today on college affordability. The survey — a joint effort by Money and Kaplan Test Prep — asked parents of high school-aged college aspirants whether they agreed or disagreed with particular proposals to improve college affordability.
The survey asked about a range of ideas, from providing two years of college free (an Obama Administration favorite), to raising state taxes in order to lower tuition at public colleges, to a free first year of college delivered via online courses. Also on the list was a new form of private financing where funders pay the cost of a student’s education in return for a percentage of their post-college income for a set period of time (an idea we’ve discussed a few times here at AEI and are about to examine with our own field research).
The results were as follows:
A couple things jump out.
1)People like things that are free and/or paid for by other people more than things they have to pay for themselves.
To their credit, the items do make an effort to highlight some of the trade-offs inherent in different public spending (that is, higher taxes, elimination of other financial aid programs, higher tuition for some). But it’s not at all surprising that a free year or two of college is more popular than financing a student has to pay back. One is “free” to the student, the other isn’t. It’s like asking whether people would prefer a free car to one that they have to take out a loan to pay for.
Some might counter by pointing out that these parents were also more bullish on raising taxes to lower tuition than they were on an income-share approach. This is somewhat closer to a “pay-for,” but even here it’s worth pointing out that this group would disproportionately benefit from higher taxes that are earmarked for public colleges. Higher taxes apply to everyone, whether they have kids in college or not. To borrow from Poli Sci 1, the benefits of such a proposal are concentrated among the folks in the sample while the costs are diffuse.
To be clear: the point isn’t to defend ISAs as some silver bullet. They’re but one tool in a broader reform agenda, and we still don’t know enough about how consumers view them. In fact, we are about to launch our own effort to study how potential users view the idea, especially compared to traditional student loans.
It’s not at all clear that individuals would prefer this to a traditional loan, and students may be concerned about the length of repayment, the percentage of income, or both. These are important questions to ask. But it shouldn’t be all that surprising that beneficiaries prefer things that are free to things that aren’t.
2)None of the ideas get majority support.
Much more interesting, to me, is the fact that none of these ideas get majority support. Despite being the very population that would benefit from two years of free college, just 45% agreed with the proposal. Yes, more agreed than disagreed (a 16% positive advantage), but still not a majority. Interestingly, one-year of free online college for students living at home was only marginally less popular (44% to 32%) despite delivering less of a benefit.
It would be interesting to see these results broken out by income group, where I’d imagine there are differences.
The way the free college question was worded — calling for the elimination of existing aid programs and tax benefits to pay for free two-year college — likely has something to do with the lukewarm support. Parents who have benefited from these existing policies may be less sanguine on eliminating them entirely even if it buys two years of free college.
In sum: there’s plenty of further research to be done on these topics. I’d be particularly interested to see how support for various proposals differs across parents of school-age kids and the
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