Free College Education!

This seems to be one of the key platforms for the Democrat presidential candidates right now. Even the media is jumping on the band-wagon on this issue. We are frequently told that we are behind the curve on providing free college—with “many” other countries already providing free college. Students are being promised “free” college, which for those of us who still carry college loans sounds like a dream come true and for those in the entitlement generation sounds like the fulfillment of their expectations.

Yet, this topic has sparked quite questions in my mind, for example:

• How “free” is this education?
• How many countries are actually providing free college to their students?
• Who is paying for the “free” college?

These questions, and many others related to this topic, are all very important to understanding this issue. Unfortunately, a quick search on the topic provides either (a) very, very little relevant information for the answers to these questions or (b) very skewed information. It takes a tremendous amount of time and data-crunching to get “real” answers to these questions (though several answers are still incredibly elusive or hard to find).

An Example

Here is an example of skewed information which I found the following infographic as I started my research on this topic:

(Click the infographic to see a larger view)

The way the information is presented in this infographic leads us to conclude that we are doing really poorly in every area of international comparison. However, a quick cross-check of the three international comparisons (attendance, affordability, and percent of costs covered by student loans) reveals a very important piece of information—only three countries, with the loose possibility of a fourth (the UK, if you count “England and Wales” as sufficient to cover the UK in the area of affordability), are in all three comparisons.

Here is the comparison of these countries:

Looking at this table, we can see that we really aren’t that far off from these countries. However, the infographic above does not show which countries are offering “free college.” The information is only presented in a way which causes us to be appalled by our lack of support for our college students.

Real-Life Data-Crunching

In order to do an accurate comparison, it is necessary to identify the countries which offer free college. According to Desert News, Nola, Alternet, Salon, and Washington Post, the countries which offer free college are (in no particular order):

1. Germany
2. Finland
3. France
4. Sweden
5. Norway
6. Slovenia
7. Brazil
8. Argentina
9. Denmark
10. Greece
11. Scotland
12. Turkey

Twelve countries, out of 195 or 196 (depending on Taiwan’s status) countries in the world today (of course, that’s if you count Scotland as a country and not a part of the UK). That’s about 6% of the countries of the world offering free college education. Let’s look at what that number is in a pie chart:

Nope. It still doesn’t look like a significant portion of the countries in the world. So, to say that the US is behind the curve of providing free college education isn’t actually very accurate (and that isn’t even considering how many of the above countries only recently started offering free college, which provides another important variable in the discussion).

Now for the purposes of the data-crunching I am going to take you through, we will remove Brazil, Argentina and Scotland from the comparisons. There are two reasons for this: (1) they are not OECD members; (2) they did not provide data for the areas I will be crunching will (a crucial element of thorough and correct comparisons); and/or (3) these three countries are not consistent throughout the sources which created the above list. This means that we will be looking at: Germany; Finland; France; Sweden; Norway; Slovenia; Denmark; Greece; and Turkey compared to the United States.

Each of these countries is presented to us as being better than our country in the area of education…simply because they offer something we don’t: free college. However, are these countries actually doing better than we are in the area of education? According to the 2012 results for PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) the US actually isn’t doing that poorly. These assessments compare 15-year-olds in the countries choosing to participate and evaluate student achievement in reading, math, and science. Here are the 2012 student average scores for each country we are looking at:

Data Source: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/table-library.asp

The colored horizontal lines are the US score for reading (blue), math (red), and science (green). This allows you to see who is above and below us in scores. The circled countries are the only ones with all three scores higher than our scores. Now, in all fairness PISA scores are subject to a lot of criticism from many different sources. Some of the main criticisms are:

1. the study’s findings are arbitrary—with the methodology being pretty clear, but the interpretation and analysis of the results being vague or ambiguous (and the length of the results report not being less than 400 pages long)
2. the inability to guarantee that all students are taking the same test…especially when the tests have to be translated into the native language for students to reach their peak performance
3. the lack of enforcement on countries to have the same student demographics (e.g. China is well-known for only submitting the results from their best performing demographics, not including learning disadvantaged/disabled students, making them consistently the top performers, whereas the US, thanks to NCLB, includes every student demographic, significantly lowering its average scores and rank)
4. the tendency of nations toward using PISA rankings either as bragging rights or as a task-master whip for their educational institutions—both of which are extremely dangerous
5. top performers of PISA not being so great on other international academic tests (e.g. Finland on the TIMSS assessment)
6. The only reported US states taking the PISA tests are Connecticut, Florida and Massachusetts

These criticisms notwithstanding, the PISA performance and ranking is still considered a “good” picture of global educational performance. Therefore, if we were to use PISA results as a measure of whether we are falling behind in the education support and provision for the students in our country (an implied position in the “we’re behind in providing free college education” argument), we are still beating or matching half of the countries providing free college education. Don’t believe me? Look at this chart which shows these countries’ rankings out of the 65 countries who submitted data to the PISA study in 2012:

Data Source: http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/table-library.asp

Alright, since test scores don’t look like we are falling terribly behind our “peers,” let’s take a minute and look at the enrollment percentage of the students within the 5-year age range following high school.

Data Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/

In this chart, the higher the percentage, the more students in that bracket are enrolled in college. Based on this chart, it would be reasonable to argue that free college actually means less students get to go to college. The only country that has a higher percentage than the United States is Finland. Apart from that, the next closest country is Greece…which is a questionable country to be measuring against given how many times it’s been bailed out recently.

So, how much is each country spending on college (as a percentage of GDP)?

Data Source: http://www.nationmaster.com/

According to this chart, the US really isn’t behind any of these countries either on collegiate level spending or on total education spending as a percentage of GDP. Which brings us to the next question, if the government is paying for college, who’s putting the money into the government so that they can pay for it? The simple answer: anyone who is paying “taxes”…which happens to be a large portion of the population (these taxes are not just income taxes; they include sales tax, property tax, inheritance tax, gift tax, various and sundry fees, etc.—in other words, anything that can contribute to GDP).

Data Sources: http://www.nationmaster.com/; http://www.keepeek.com/Digital-Asset-Management/oecd/taxation/taxing-wages-2015_tax_wages-2015-en#page1 and http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=AV_AN_WAGE

According to this chart, the United States not only has the lowest income tax, we have a significantly lower total tax percentage. The income tax wedge, according to OECD, includes employee taxes and employer/employee mandatory deductions (e.g. social security)—in other words, everything on the “deductions” side of your paystub that is required by law. The Total Tax Percentage covers revenue from “taxes, social contributions, and other revenues such as fines, fees, rent, and income from property or sales.”

In the gray columns, I took the US average annual salary in 2014, rounded it to 57,000 for ease of calculations and then figured out what the “take home” total would be with the different tax percentages. Now, granted, it is really difficult to accurately calculate out exactly what you would take home in the Total Tax Percentage when compared with the Income Tax Wedge, since Total Tax should, in theory, include income tax (but it is unclear whether it actually does or not).

Regardless of how precise the above calculations are, it is still safe to say that in the United States an average person will take home around $4,000 a year more in their salary than they would under the taxes in any other country we’ve looked at. Now, some food for thought on this point:

• If we assume an average of $4,000 per year for a person (assuming they earn an average income)
• If we assume that they are working for 40 years following their college education (assuming constant employment from 25-65 years of age)
• if we assume that all numbers will stay the same for those 40 years (I know, huge assumption, but it is necessary to put this into perspective)
• Then we can conclude that the total money the average American will save just in taxes (which would be funding the “free” college) will be $160,000.

The current national average for 4 years of college tuition is $60,000 for public institutions and $157,000 for private nonprofit institutions (e.g. Harvard and Yale).

[http://nces.ed.gov/FastFacts/display.asp?id=76]

Stop and ponder this a moment—if we provide “free” college, which will almost certainly only apply to public institutions since they are state-run, we are “saving” ourselves $60,000. However, it can be very reasonably assumed that if we offer “free” college, our taxes or “fees” will significantly increase (don’t believe me? Check out the increase in costs associated with Obamacare). We aren’t even talking about the “fees” charged by the universities (which are a primary reason so many of the students in these countries end up with loans).

What Can We Do?

First of all, we need to rethink just how much of our lives we want the government’s hands in. Do we really want the government controlling the purse-strings of our education? When they do, they get to

Second of all, there are still many questions we could and should be asking of those proposing “free” college, such as:

• How realistic is this utopic dream of free college education?
• How many countries are actually providing free college to their students?
• How long have these countries been providing free college and how successful are their programs?
• How many years are covered in the offer of free college (is it just a four-year degree or is it your entire education to reach the requisite degree for your career field)?
• How much freedom of choice in education do the students in these programs have (do they get to pursue whichever degree path they want; do the students have the variety of degree options there that they currently enjoy here; etc.)?
• Is it really the most cost effective option to offer “free” college or is there a better option which is not being presented?
• What in our history has led us to the place we are in college costs/financial aid and what good and bad have come about from these events?
• How can we hold on to the good results from our history?
• How do we properly repair the bad results in a way which will not set off a chain of events creating an even worse outcome in the future?

Simply jumping on the bandwagon because we really like the sound of what is being said is as dangerous as a lemming following the group off the edge of a cliff. Refuse to follow blindly. Stand against the flow and call the warnings to those around you who are not stopping in their blind, mad rush.

Thirdly, stop, think, and seek for answers. If the answers are not available, dig! If people are beating around the answers to your questions, refusing to give you the answers, or refusing to help you find the answers—Refuse to stand with them until you have enough information to make the most informed decision you can. This may mean you take a position in the opposing camp. It may mean that you take a position no one likes (in other words neither in the “pro” camp nor “con” camp).

Finally, remember that you will be held accountable by God for all that you did and did not do. If something is passed and you simply sat back and watched, you will be answerable to God for your lack of participation in the decision. God has placed you in a country where you are able to raise your voice. He has placed you in a country where your voice can be heard. He expects you to actively do something. “To whom much is given, much will be required” (Luke 12:48)—He has given you so much simply by placing you in this country, follow through in order to give a good account of yourself (Romans 14:12; 1 Peter 4:5) when you stand before His throne of judgment (Ecclesiastes 12:14; Matthew 25:31-46; Acts 17:31).