Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is calling for tuition-free public colleges and universities nationwide, arguing the move would help control skyrocketing costs at private schools like Cornell University, which recently became the first Ivy League school to charge more than $100,000 a year in tuition.
Ocasio-Cortez made the case Sunday at a “Students vs. Billionaires Town Hall” event hosted by the group More Perfect Union. She was asked what she and the Democratic Party are doing to make sure middle- and low-income families can still afford a quality higher education, a question posed directly in light of Cornell’s new price tag.
The congresswoman said she was struck by the figure, noting it exceeds what many American households earn in an entire year.
She argued that many colleges and universities are prioritizing spending on buildings and amenities over education itself.
“A lot of what colleges and universities do with their funds is more of a real estate investment strategy, than an educational strategy,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
She said schools pour money into “new buildings, and facilities that are often marketed as luxury,” while adjunct faculty are “barely paid a living wage” and the quality of instruction suffers.
Ocasio-Cortez also pointed to how tuition levels interact with federal financial aid, saying schools that receive federal funds should face more accountability for how they use that money.
“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.
Her proposed solution: rebuild a strong, low-cost public option to compete with private universities.
“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,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Anticipating criticism that the idea is unaffordable or overly ambitious, Ocasio-Cortez said it isn’t new.
“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 went on to link the decline of that free public system to the civil rights era, saying: “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.”
The remarks build on Ocasio-Cortez’s past support for free college for all students, including those from wealthy families, a position she has defended previously.
