Free for all

We're all college students, which means one thing; we love free stuff. We enjoy going to different events around campus -- not to attend them but, to get the free things available at them. Instead of going after the normal stuff like pizza and cookies, we should go after the motherload.\nTuition.\nThere have been 50 billion reports that all tell us one thing -- tuition is going up. I don't need a report to tell me I'm paying more for college. I just have to look at my bursar bill. \nAccording to a Sept. 30 report on www.cnn.com, the University of California system had a 39.4 percent increase in tuition. A survey by the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges reports tuition hikes at state colleges and universities in at least 37 states -- almost all as a result of state budget cuts. But here is a solution for thought: free higher education for everyone attending a public college or university. \nUnder a plan that's similar to the G.I. bill, under which a generation of World War II veterans received what was usually full tuition support and stipends, the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute has a plan in which the government can send everyone to a public institution for free. \nAccording to www.freehighered.com, by 1952, the federal government had spent $7 billion (nearly $39 billion in 1994 dollars) on sending veterans to college. This amounted to 1.3 percent of total federal expenditures ($521.8 billion) during that period. A 1988 report by a congressional subcommittee on education and health estimated that 40 percent of those who attended college under the G.I. bill would not otherwise have done so. \nSo you have an estimated extra 40 percent of the population who was able to attend college because money was no longer an issue, and it only cost 1.3 percent of the total federal expenditures. You must keep in mind that these students were academically qualified to attend but could not afford to go. \nBut college has become much more expensive today. Can it still work? Yes. \nA 1999 report from the U.S. Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics indicates that in 1996, tuition and fee revenues at all two- and four-year degree-awarding public educational institutions totaled just over $23 billion. This is a relatively small sum -- equivalent to roughly 2 percent of current federal budgets.\nAlso, if more people attended college, then the increase would cost more for the government. Adolph Reed, Jr., who is a professor of political science on the graduate faculty of social and political science at the New School for Social Research and activist for free higher education said in the fall 2001 edition of Dissent Magazine (www.dissentmagazine.org), said, "Simply closing corporate tax shelter loopholes introduced since 1990 would generate an estimated $60 billion annually." \nRemember, President Bush asked for $87 billion to continue the war in Afghanistan and Iraq. \nThe only problem with the movement for free higher education is that it will do what most of the elite in society don't want to happen: educate the poor and the masses. For far too long, the majority of society has not been included in the national debate over policies that affect their daily lives, and with educational attainment, they have the knowledge to do so. I don't know about you, but I want all sectors of society to have that ability. But most of all I want free education. What about you? \nAs Brigham Young once said, "Education is the power to think clearly, the power to act well in the world's work and the power to appreciate life"