Biden plan: Free community college, expanded loan program
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden wants to make community and technical college free and federal college loan programs more generous as he shifts leftward but not as far as his 2020 rivals.
The former vice president’s $750 billion higher education plan represents a major expansion of the federal government’s role in educating Americans beyond high school. But Biden’s pitch Tuesday is not as sweeping as proposals from his more progressive rivals Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, both of whom offer plans exceeding the $1 trillion mark.
The competing approaches reflect Democrats’ efforts to address spiking tuition costs in the U.S. and the $1.5 trillion-plus in student debt held by about 45 million Americans. The party’s education policy divide is similar to the gap that separates Biden from the two progressive senators on health care, with the former vice president proposing to expand the federal government’s role in the existing health insurance market, while Warren and Sanders propose a single-payer insurance system that would see the federal government essentially replace private insurance altogether.
The crux of Biden’s higher education plan is a federal-state partnership to cover community college tuition and technical training. Biden calls for the federal government to cover 75% of the tuition costs, with states covering the rest. That’s a similar financing concept to the Medicaid insurance program for the poor and the disabled, with states required to cover some costs to qualify for federal money to cover the majority of the program.
Sanders and Warren propose universal, free access to all undergraduate public colleges and universities.
Bill Barrow is an Associated Press writer.