Refining Kevin Carey’s $10K Proposal

Seasonal cycles can be comforting. Although it’s technically still August, I’ve noticed some leaves starting to change, which heralds the return of warmer clothes. The climate may be getting weirder, but the cycle of seasons remains legible, even if the borders shift a bit.

Similarly, every few years, Kevin Carey serves a proposal to change how higher ed is funded in America, and I volley with a response from a community college perspective. It’s that time again: The familiar rhythms of point and counterpoint beckon. I’ve missed that.

Broadly speaking, his current proposal would be a considerable improvement on what we have now. He suggests that the federal government provide $10,000 per year to colleges for each student, on the condition that they charge no tuition to families with incomes under the national median. Above the median, they can charge up to $10,000 per year per student, which, as he correctly notes, is below the current sticker price at most public flagship universities. Students could use Pell Grants to help cover room and board, if needed. Colleges that participate would commit to accepting all transfer credits. He also includes a provision that would improve funding for higher ed research.

Carey suggests that colleges be allowed to opt in to or out of this system, so the Harvards of the world can go on doing what they’re doing and the idea would be spared a certain level of conflict.

There’s a lot to like. First, a strong yes to improving higher ed research. I’ve been waiting for literal decades for a peer-reviewed study showing which budget cuts do the least educational harm, for example. Given how many colleges have had to make these decisions, you’d think that someone might have done one by now, but I haven’t seen it. It wouldn’t take much money, in the scope of a federal budget, to improve research on (not to mention in) higher ed. It would be money well spent.

The transfer provision addresses a real problem—credit loss upon transfer—but it presumes lockstep curricula across institutions. That may be possible in states with strongly unified public systems and common course numbering, such as Florida, but it would be a real challenge in places with a more decentralized (or “home rule”) system. The way that colleges get around that now is by assigning “free elective” status to courses they don’t want to accept. Free elective status is where credits go to die. In fairness, sometimes students change majors upon transfer and not every course in the first major fits into the second.

Instead, I’d go with shifting the burden of proof. Instead of the student needing to prove that a course is equivalent, the receiving institution should have to prove that it isn’t. That would require some sort of state-level authority figure to make an impartial determination. Too, institutions could be required to post publicly the percentage of credits they don’t count toward entering students’ degrees. That would leave room for local idiosyncrasy and curricular innovation while still addressing the very real problem of credit loss.

I’ll offer a few friendly amendments to the rest of it.

First, we’d need some sort of maintenance-of-effort requirement for states. I can easily envision states taking the federal money as a windfall and reducing their own contributions proportionally, leaving colleges worse off because now their hands are tied on tuition. Any waiver of the MOE would have to be covered by additional federal funding. That would be particularly necessary when the next recession hits, which it will. The federal government can run deficits—it’s staggeringly good at it—but states can’t, so when tax revenues drop, states tend to cut higher ed funding on the theory that colleges can always raise tuition. A sort of Keynesian backstop could make the proposal relatively recession-proof.

Second, as with any proposal that puts forward a round number, the support would have to be indexed to inflation. Ideally, it should be indexed to the rate of inflation for services, so we don’t die slowly from Baumol’s cost disease. Over the course of my career, I’ve heard the term “flat-funded” more often than I care to remember. Without indexing, even a seemingly generous opening amount can quickly become inadequate.

I’d also recommend addressing part-time students, since they’re the majority at most community colleges. A simple pro-rated FTE formula would fall short because part-time students can consume just as much tutoring, advising and counseling as full-time students. Some blend of head count and FTE would come closer to the truth.

Carey’s proposal assumes that all relevant instruction is either for-credit or self-sustaining. That’s not the case. Adult basic education—adult literacy, ESOL, GED prep, etc.—does not carry academic credit and does not turn a profit. It’s a crucial community service that many, if not most, community colleges offer, but it’s badly underfunded. A separate line of support here would make a real difference.

Dual enrollment raises a different set of questions. It’s a double-digit percentage of community college enrollments nationally and one of the few growth areas. Funding models right now are all over the place, but federal financial aid doesn’t cover it. Some states pay the tuition, some require high schools to pay the tuition and some require parents to pay, often at a reduced rate. Bringing equity and sustainability to this practice would require addressing the funding needs of both K–12 and public higher ed across multiple state models. That’s a tall order, but the practice now is much too widespread to ignore.

Finally, of course, there’s the question of accreditation. Until Trump’s first term, regional accreditors were considered the gold standard. Each one rested on a de facto regional monopoly to enforce its standards. The system was an accident of history—presumably, nobody would have designed it that way if they were starting with a blank screen—but it worked tolerably well.

The first Trump administration broke those regional monopolies, blessed so-called national accreditors and encouraged a race to the bottom. With institutions allowed to accreditor shop, the guardrails against financial abuse are much flimsier than they used to be. At $10,000 per student, with pliant accreditors at the ready, things could get ugly very quickly. The proposal would need to be pretty specific about the requirements for any given college to participate.

None of these strike me as fundamentally hostile to the proposal. If anything, they’d make it more resilient. It feels out of fashion right now in this political climate, but this is the time to develop good ideas; when the winds shift and it’s possible to make things better, it’s good to be prepared with something right out of the gate. Seasons change, winds shift; it may not be sweater weather right now, but it will come, and we should be prepared.