Jason Delisle & Preston Cooper:

The 2020 elections showcased what was easily the most radical higher-education agenda the Democratic Party has ever endorsed. Mass student-loan forgiveness, $13,000 Pell Grants for undergraduates, and free-college programs were all on the wish list. This was a far cry from the Obama-era platform, which consisted largely of proposals to increase tax breaks for tuition and reduce interest rates on student loans.

Some credit for this leftward lurch belongs to senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sanders first proposed a national free-college program during his 2016 presidential bid, and the Democratic Party has since adopted his plan as its own. Then during the 2020 presidential primaries, both Warren and Sanders called for the government to forgive most of the outstanding $1.6 trillion in federal student-loan debt. Although the official Democratic platform calls for a slightly less radical $10,000 in forgiveness per borrower, mass loan forgiveness is now a central pillar of the party’s agenda.

Warren and Sanders can’t claim all the credit, however. A second impetus behind the party’s acceptance of increasingly radical higher-education policies is the fact that contemporary debates over the subject are dominated by claims that access to college is severely inequitable and unaffordable, and that matters have grown worse in recent years. This message, advanced by left-leaning advocacy groups and sympathetic media outlets, appears to have convinced many Democrats that their agenda of the not-too-distant past — one based on modestly more generous aid for students — has failed. This, in turn, has led them to endorse proposals that are more far-reaching than they were in the past.