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The reporting on this plan so far seems to be very light on the details of how the federal government is going to eliminate something it doesn't control (public

The reporting on this plan so far seems to be very light on the details of how the federal government is going to eliminate something it doesn't control (public university tuition).

sanxiyn 8y ago
I am rather ignorant of US system, but do you mean the federal government doesn't control tuition, or can't? Can't the federal government just pass law to start to control it? I seem to recall it can regulate interstate commerce?
- sokoloff 8y ago
  It's not clear to me that on-premises state university education is interstate commerce. (Not that that would necessarily stop it from being tried, but we have, at least in theory per the Tenth Amendment, state supremacy for areas not granted the Feds by the Constitution nor reserved for the people.)
  - dillonmckay 8y ago
    Many of these state schools operate international or online programs, and charge some students ‘out-of-state’ tuition, and take federal subsidies.
  - dragonwriter 8y ago
    > It's not clear to me that on-premises state university education is interstate commerce. It's already heavily federally subsidized, and challenging changes to the subsidy conditions on the grounds that the feds have no right to be involved at all would be suicidal for state universities since it wouldn't just kill the new conditions if it succeeded but the subsidies themselves.
    - sokoloff 8y ago
      So treat it like the federal highway funding being conditioned on the states "behaving" with respect to speed limit, DUI laws, and other items. I don't love but accept the feds exerting economic power based on economic grants they decide to give or withhold. I do have a problem with them asserting regulatory power reserved to the states/people by the 10th.
      - dragonwriter 8y ago
        > So treat it like the federal highway funding being conditioned on the states "behaving" with respect to speed limit, DUI laws, and other items. That's already the case on a per-institution basis for federal funding, all that a policy goal of eliminating tuition requires is changing the conditions.
  - wang_li 8y ago
    After Wickard v Filburn, and more recently Gonzales v Raich, everything effects interstate commerce.
- jkingsbery 8y ago
  In the US, most public universities are run by state governments (some larger cities also have university systems), and most of the students come from within the state. So it's not something they own, and there's no interestate commerce to regulate. As another commented out, at the end of the day the federal government can pass whatever law it wants - some of us argue that the federal government should generally let states pass laws running themselves with things like this, since different states run things differently depending on a bunch of factors.
  - derekp7 8y ago
    They could pass laws that enact federally funded institutions that compete against state/private schools. Not sure how they could get employers to not discriminate against the "cheap" degrees though. Although in theory there would be no discrimination if the end product is ensured via appropriate testing, similar to state bar exams. Of course, there is already the community college act, so this could be extended to having community colleges offer 4-year degrees.
- vonmoltke 8y ago
  Not directly. Public universities in the US are chartered and controlled by the states they are in (with a few exceptions for city universities). The feds can try to use carrot-and-stick measures by playing with federal funding for higher education, but that may well backfire. Also, US states subsidize (heavily, in the case of smarter states like California and Florida) tuition at their public universities for state residents. It's unclear how residency would play in to this plan.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> The reporting on this plan so far seems to be very light on the details of how the federal government is going to eliminate something it doesn't control (public university tuition). Public (and private, for that matter) universities rely on federal funding for lots of things; make public research funding available only to non-tuition universities, eliminate federal grants and loans to students that help pay tuition and replace them with, say, enrollment based grants directly to tuition-free institutions, and you'll be left with tuition-free institutions and not much else.

The reporting on this plan so far seems to be very light on the details of how the federal government is going to eliminate something it doesn't control (public university tuition).

sanxiyn 8y ago

I am rather ignorant of US system, but do you mean the federal government doesn't control tuition, or can't? Can't the federal government just pass law to start to control it? I seem to recall it can regulate interstate commerce?

sokoloff 8y ago
It's not clear to me that on-premises state university education is interstate commerce. (Not that that would necessarily stop it from being tried, but we have, at least in theory per the Tenth Amendment, state supremacy for areas not granted the Feds by the Constitution nor reserved for the people.)
- dillonmckay 8y ago
  Many of these state schools operate international or online programs, and charge some students ‘out-of-state’ tuition, and take federal subsidies.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > It's not clear to me that on-premises state university education is interstate commerce. It's already heavily federally subsidized, and challenging changes to the subsidy conditions on the grounds that the feds have no right to be involved at all would be suicidal for state universities since it wouldn't just kill the new conditions if it succeeded but the subsidies themselves.
  - sokoloff 8y ago
    So treat it like the federal highway funding being conditioned on the states "behaving" with respect to speed limit, DUI laws, and other items. I don't love but accept the feds exerting economic power based on economic grants they decide to give or withhold. I do have a problem with them asserting regulatory power reserved to the states/people by the 10th.
    - dragonwriter 8y ago
      > So treat it like the federal highway funding being conditioned on the states "behaving" with respect to speed limit, DUI laws, and other items. That's already the case on a per-institution basis for federal funding, all that a policy goal of eliminating tuition requires is changing the conditions.
- wang_li 8y ago
  After Wickard v Filburn, and more recently Gonzales v Raich, everything effects interstate commerce.
jkingsbery 8y ago
In the US, most public universities are run by state governments (some larger cities also have university systems), and most of the students come from within the state. So it's not something they own, and there's no interestate commerce to regulate. As another commented out, at the end of the day the federal government can pass whatever law it wants - some of us argue that the federal government should generally let states pass laws running themselves with things like this, since different states run things differently depending on a bunch of factors.
- derekp7 8y ago
  They could pass laws that enact federally funded institutions that compete against state/private schools. Not sure how they could get employers to not discriminate against the "cheap" degrees though. Although in theory there would be no discrimination if the end product is ensured via appropriate testing, similar to state bar exams. Of course, there is already the community college act, so this could be extended to having community colleges offer 4-year degrees.
vonmoltke 8y ago
Not directly. Public universities in the US are chartered and controlled by the states they are in (with a few exceptions for city universities). The feds can try to use carrot-and-stick measures by playing with federal funding for higher education, but that may well backfire. Also, US states subsidize (heavily, in the case of smarter states like California and Florida) tuition at their public universities for state residents. It's unclear how residency would play in to this plan.

dragonwriter 8y ago

> The reporting on this plan so far seems to be very light on the details of how the federal government is going to eliminate something it doesn't control (public university tuition). Public (and private, for that matter) universities rely on federal funding for lots of things; make public research funding available only to non-tuition universities, eliminate federal grants and loans to students that help pay tuition and replace them with, say, enrollment based grants directly to tuition-free institutions, and you'll be left with tuition-free institutions and not much else.