Oregon Takes a Step Towards Debt-Free Degrees
I got a check from the U.S. Treasury in the mail this week. It was both a surprise and a mystery. It was a surprise, because I wasn’t expecting any checks, least of all from the federal government. At first the reason why the government sent me a check was a mystery. It turned out the mystery went all the way back to my college days.
I was reminded of my (as yet un-deposited) check when I read the news that Oregon has taken a step towards making tuition free at the state’s public universities.
On college campuses across the United States, the eternal optimism of youth has been throttled out by a fear of crushing student debt. That’s certainly the case in Oregon, where the cost of tuition has soared as public funding for higher education has declined.But the state Legislature this week approved an idea that might ease the economic dread for future philosophy and art history majors. The concept – called Pay It Forward – calls for students to attend public universities tuition free and loan free. In exchange, students would have 3 percent deducted from their post-graduation paychecks for about a quarter-century. The money would go into a fund to pay for future students.The bill, which passed unanimously and is expected to be signed this month by Gov. John Kitzhaber, directs the state’s Higher Education Coordination Commission to develop a Pay It Forward pilot project for consideration by the 2015 Legislature. One question that must be resolved is how to fund the program’s start-up costs, estimated at $9 billion, since the initial students who attend tuition-free would be years away from entering the labor force.Though the timing was coincidental, the bill won final approval on Monday, the same day that federal student loan interest rates doubled from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent.
I only wish something light that had been in place when I was in college.
That brings me back to the check I got in the mail this week. I knew before I opened it