A Lesson on Free College for Sanders and Warren.

• Author: Carey, Kevin

THEIR PLANS WOULD BAKE INTO PLACE THE INJUSTICES OF THE CURRENT SYSTEM. HERE'S A BETTER APPROACH.

In April, Senator Elizabeth Warren unveiled yet another ambitious policy proposal: a $1.25 trillion plan to make college more affordable. It includes canceling up to $50,000 in student loan debt for 95 percent of borrowers, billions of dollars for historically black colleges, and $100 billion in new money for the federal Pell Grant program.

Almost as an afterthought, Warren's plan also includes a proposal to make tuition free at every public college and university in America. While light on details, Warren's version of free college seems to be modeled after Senator Bernie Sanders's. Sanders, of course, built his improbable 2016 primary campaign in part by igniting Millennial student debtors who were outraged by the broken promise of affordable higher education. Now, every serious Democratic contender will have to propose some version of free college--or, as Senator Amy Klobuchar and Mayor Pete Buttigieg did recently, explain why not.

The broad case for free college is very strong. Many states have slashed public funding for higher learning, shifting the burden to students and parents. Private schools have hiked prices into the stratosphere in pursuit of status and fame. As real public university tuition tripled over the last three decades while middle-income wages stagnated, the federal government's main response was to lend students ever-larger sums of money to make up the difference, with no control over how much colleges charged or whether the degrees were any good. It was a policy mistake of epic proportions, leaving the path to economic mobility badly narrowed and a generation of collegians saddled with unaffordable loans.

Fixing this blunder makes a lot of sense as a matter of both politics and policy. There's just one problem: the Warren and Sanders free college plans are badly designed. The Sanders proposal would give states federal grants equal to two-thirds of the cost of bringing tuition at all public colleges and universities in the state down to zero, contingent on states matching with one-third of the necessary money. Warren's plan is vague, but similar: the federal government would "partner with states to split the costs of tuition and fees." Both, in other words, would force the federal government to make up the difference between the funding that states already provide and the funding necessary to make tuition free. This approach takes the vast disparities and injustices of the existing higher education funding system and permanently bakes them in place, punishing the states already doing the most to support students and rewarding the ones doing the least.

If this version of free college becomes the Democratic consensus, the party could be headed for disaster: a 2020 victory followed by a policymaking collapse akin to the 1993 health care fiasco, hobbling the victor's presidency and setting back reform for a generation. Fortunately, there is a better way. To understand why the Warren and Sanders plans don't work, and how to improve them, we need look no further than the flagship public university in Sanders's home state.

The University of Vermont was founded in 1791 and sits on a lovely redbrick campus a short walk uphill from Lake Champlain. The surrounding city of Burlington, where Bernie Sanders began his career in government as mayor in 1981, has a low-key vibe, with streets full of restaurants and boutique clothing stores. Lately, the region has become a hub of small craft brewing companies. The fall foliage is...