On Tuesday, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York introduced the Excelsior Scholarship, a proposal in which New York State colleges will provide free tuition for eligible students. The $163 million proposal will provide college students with a household income of $125,000 or less the ability to attend a state or city university in New York — including two-year community colleges — for free. The scholarship will be implemented over the next three years for students who have an income of $100,000 or less and by 2019, the scholarship will apply to those who have an income of $125,000 or less. According to Jim Malatras, the director of state operations, 200,000 students will benefit from this aid by 2019. This aid will cover the gap between tuition and a student’s existing aid. Thus, the Excelsior Scholarship in combination with existing financial aid, can cover the entirety of a student’s four years in college. According to the administration, under the proposal, the population of students attending an university full-time will increase by 10% by 2019.
This proposal is a significant milestone in the progressives’ fight for free college, a right many Western nations already have. In the United States, education is not viewed as a right, but a privilege only the affluent can afford. On a national student loan debt clock, you can watch America’s student loan debt grow $2,726 every second. This clock accurately illustrates the financial burdens millennials across the United States struggle to pay off. Currently, America’s student loan debt totals to about $1.4 trillion and 7 million borrowers are on default. This vast number of students in debt can be attributed to the fact that the U.S. has the most expensive system of higher education in the developed world. Cuomo is taking steps in the right direction, but he is not extending his reach far enough. If he truly valued education as a right and viewed the financial struggle of college students as like “starting a race with an anchor tied to your leg,” he would make efforts to implement free college for students of all income brackets. Making college affordable is only the first step to increasing enrollment in institutes of higher learning, but it is the most essential to providing a path to education for individuals of all socioeconomic backgrounds. We must strive to be the most educated workforce in the world, and presently, we are far behind.
A Democratic centrist with a mixed track record, it is likely that Cuomo had no intention of pursuing free college until Bernie Sanders pushed the democratic establishment further left in the 2016 presidential primaries.
This political move might even entail a possible presidential bid in 2020, this landmark progressive bill laying the groundwork for Cuomo to gain the support of the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party. Sanders, a major proponent of this proposal, has spotlighted progressive issues, forcing mainstream media pundits and establishment politicians to acknowledge the trials and tribulations of the working class. The people have spoken out on the toppling college debt as 62 percent of Americans say they support debt-free university tuition, according to a July survey of 1,000 American adults. Progressives have advocated for Cuomo to support a variety of issues, using public pressure as an advantageous tool in a political landscape consisting of billionaire lobbyists, and the fight for free college has proved successful. We must continue down this path to gain ground on every single issue, using the support of the people as our bargaining chip. We must coalesce to form a solidified force in which we will not surrender any more of our mangled democracy to the 1%. I highly recommend that Affinity readers read Michael Moore’s “Five Things You Can Do Right Now About Donald J. Trump.” A well-written list that proposes the people form their own “rapid response team,” Moore emphasizes that the people cannot depend on representatives and the establishment to defend the interests of the people. No matter your opinion of Moore’s stance on the political spectrum, these effective steps to battling the policies of Donald Trump apply to a progressive’s continuous battle, pushing the country further left. Cuomo’s free college proposal is only the first of wins for the working class and 2017 will provide much more if we continue to push, protest, and take action in order to retrieve our rights.
