Student services would also likely take a hit. Conservatives are already salivating at the chance to cut budgets for diversity programs. Academic departments would likely shrink, with humanities and social science taking the biggest hits because of their inability to fall back on research grants or consulting gigs.
And some universities would simply shut. In recent years, college closures have come mostly in the for-profit sector, but private colleges have also suffered some pain.
An inability to charge tuition could extend this unhappy trend to lower-ranked state schools, which probably are a lower priority for state governments, have less administrative fat to trim and have fewer alumni donations.
Economically, starving the U.S. university system of funding would be a terrible move. Universities are the best tool the country has for revitalizing flagging regions. Their research sustains U.S. technological and industrial leadership. They remain one of the few truly effective, world-beating institutions that the U.S. has left. And like it or not, America's university system has been built on the back of upper-middle-class tuition dollars.
Although free-college crusaders might imagine a never-ending wave of socialist political victories providing a shower of government money for colleges that ends the need for tuition, the rest of the country should look on this fantasy with a jaundiced eye. Instead of smashing the funding model of the nation’s most functional and important liberal institution, the U.S. should simply focus on improving access and affordability for poor and minority students. Universalism is good in many cases, but this isn’t one of them.
This story was provided by Bloomberg News.