College for all, the Europeans, and path dependency
Remember when Bernie Sanders proposed his College for All Act? I had initially thought of it as so unserious as to not even merit any attention, but it seems relevant in light of the “I defaulted and I’m proud” op-ed from last weekend.
First, the Sanders plan: given that public colleges are financed and governed at the state level, and private colleges, well, privately, his attempt to fund and govern colleges at the federal level is a bit convoluted. Here are the key bits:
1) beginning in 2016, the federal government is to provide grants, with the state matching at a 67%/33% rate, equivalent to the amount that (including the states’ required portion) covers tuition and required fees at that state’s public universities for that year. (The fiscal years are a bit off, or else the phrasing, presumably due to poor drafting — are the grants meant to equal the amount that the universities charged the prior year, or amounts that the universities determine that they would have charged, absent this bill?)
