The 2 cent bachelor’s degree

Americans pay more out-of-pocket college expenses than almost any country on Earth. So how is it that students in France and Denmark, among others, go to school without paying a dime?

Because their governments work like they’re supposed to. 

But college doesn’t have to cost anything out-of-pocket here, either. If the state government would simply raise the state sales tax 1.93 percent, every single student in Indiana could go to college without paying a dime. It’s as simple as that. 

And because I’m a nerd, I can prove it.

Indiana has approximately 160,000 undergraduate students attending its public universities. Based on the cost of attending IU, I’ve estimated that $15,000 would more than cover the costs of one year of school at all of these schools for Indiana residents, with plenty of wiggle-room left over.

If the state guaranteed a maximum of $15,000 to each of Indiana’s graduating seniors, it would cost the state $2.4 billion annually, or 4.6 percent of the state’s current budget, to fulfill the guarantee.

Based on the expected generated revenue, by raising the state sales tax – currently set at 7 percent for counties outside of the Indianapolis metro-area – to 8.93 percent, the state would gain an extra $4.8 billion every two years on top of the current $12.57 billion it currently earns from sales tax revenue (a 27 percent increase).

Because the state budget covers two years, dividing the $4.8 billion figure in half will get you the exact amount necessary to give every Indiana high school student who matriculates to a public university in Indiana $15,000 per year to cover all college expenses – namely, $2.4 billion (as it was calculated above). 

It’s as simple as that.

Pay two more cents on every dollar’s worth of goods you purchase in the Hoosier state and you can go to college for free. Think that might motivate more kids to go to college? I certainly do. 

A university education is our right. I know, I know, in the United States we pay for our rights, like how we pay for our right not to die when we have medical problems, or how we pay for our right to get a free public high school education by buying high school textbooks. 

But it shouldn’t be that way, and it isn’t that way in the rest of the world. After all, if France can do it, then so can we. 

It is morally wrong that we have to bury ourselves in mountains of debt with usurious interest rates in order to pay for something that should and could easily be free. You shouldn’t have to pay to be here; the only reason you are is because your government has abdicated its responsibilities.