“Pay It Forward” Tuition Plan Projected to Cost Oregon up to $20M for 20 Years
Oregon’s “Pay it Forward” college tuition reform may sound great to many, but wait until state taxpayers get the bill!
Perhaps its proponents should take the new “Personal Fiance” class offered by Oregon College.
According to the Oregonian, the state of Oregon would have to pay an extra $5 million to $20 million per year for 20 years to send 4,000 students to school for free. The idea behind “Pay it Forward” is that graduates will go to a public school or community college for free and then agree to pay a portion of their salary for a set amount of time.
A group of Portland State University students first pitched the radical tuition reform plan and different groups have since pitched new iterations of the proposal in their states. The proposal is meant to eliminate student loan debt and encourage students who would not otherwise have the opportunity to attend college.
“I feel an obligation to give this serious consideration,” Tim Nesbitt, head of the Oregon Higher Education Coordinating Commission, said in a statement Wednesday.
The Oregonian reported the state would have to pay $6.5 million in the first year of a proposal to send 1,000 students to school for free in the fall of 2016. Completing as much undergraduate work as possible, that figure would increase to its peak of $20 million in 2020. Though the cost to taxpayers would be significant, Pay it Forward would be self-sufficient in about 22 years, with post-graduates agreeing to pay back three to five percent of their income for 20 years.
Pay it Forward Tuition Reform Plan Would Cost State of Oregon Between $5M and $20M for 20 Years (University Herald)