MassBay Community College students commemorate their graduation in 2018 with a selfie. (MassBay Community College Facebook photo) field_54b3f951675b3

IN A RECENT CommonWealth commentary piece, Christopher Geary laid out the many complications and carve-outs created by many of the “debt-free” public higher education plans across the nation.

For years, we have been advocating for a first-dollar, truly debt-free public higher education system in Massachusetts. This legislative session, we have re-filed “An Act relative to debt-free public higher education.” It’s critical to think about the incredibly positive impact that debt-free college (including vocational education) would have on Massachusetts residents of all ages.

For the majority of Massachusetts families who rely on financial aid or borrow money to pay for college, that barrier, and future debt, would be erased. As a recent Massachusetts Department of Economic Research (DOER) series of charts highlighted, there are more jobs being posted that require a community college or bachelor’s degree in Massachusetts, but fewer qualified residents to fill those jobs. It was recently argued that this is largely due to a large number of baby boomers retiring, relatively few people headed towards working age, and a slowdown in immigration to Massachusetts. Debt-free college will make it much easier to bring a young and diverse population into the workforce to fill those jobs.

Additionally, as has been highlighted by the national campaign to persuade President Biden to cancel debt, led by our own Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, young people earning a degree without debt will not only have greater freedom to pursue the work they care about, but a much greater likelihood of being able to buy a house, settle down and have children, and give back to their community.

Graduating from college debt-free is not a radically new idea for our Commonwealth, but was the reality for the previous generation of college graduates. As late as 1988, the MassGrant covered 80 percent of tuition and fees at four-year public universities for working families. Today, the maximum MassGrant only covers around 10 percent of tuition and fees. Higher education funding has not recovered since the cuts in 2001, with per student funding down 32 percent and student scholarships also dropping 32 percent.

Tuition costs are borne by students, and often prevent them from becoming full-time students, delaying the time to earn their degree, while increasing their student debt burden. A student at UMass Amherst has to work more than 23 hours per week just to cover their tuition and mandatory fees, never mind the other costs of attendance (e.g., housing, food, textbooks, transportation, and childcare). Adding room and board brings that work requirement to 44 hours each week.

Graduates in Massachusetts who attended a public institution are more likely to incur student debt, and in higher amounts relative to their college costs, than those who went to private ones. The average student debt grew in the state grew at the second fastest rate in the US from 2004 to 2016, with more than 855,000 Massachusetts residents currently owing student debt averaging $33,256.

Debt-free public higher education is an important investment in our communities. More than 62 percent of all high school graduates go onto college to attend a Massachusetts public higher education institution. Sixty percent of public higher education graduates end up working in Massachusetts four years later, according to a 2018 longitudinal study.

In a state where there are a growing number of jobs in new industries, including clean energy, housing production, and medical device and pharmaceutical manufacturing, it’s important to note that our legislation would continue to support the innovation by our community colleges connecting our residents to more opportunities. We’ve already begun some of these critical investments with Early College and the Career Technical Initiative.

In our districts, Leominster’s Center for Technical Education and Innovation and Nashoba Valley Technical High School have established tuition-free programs to learn advanced manufacturing, automotive repair and plumbing for adults who have recently lost their jobs.

Finally, the debate around debt-free public higher education is an equity issue. While half of Massachusetts residents hold a bachelor’s degree, many Gateway Cities have college completion rates half that, including Brockton, Fall River, Fitchburg, and Lawrence. There are families and kids in every community that have to go deep into debt to attend a public higher education institution, which is holding back residents from their full potential. Massachusetts is home to one of the highest paid workforces in the nation because of college attainment, and we need to ensure Massachusetts residents in low-income communities and communities of color have that same access.

Many of our state leaders are calling for making some element of public higher education free. With the passage of the Fair Share Amendment to significantly boost state revenue that must be spent on education and growing tuition costs for both private and public higher education institutions, now is the time to embrace a first-dollar, truly debt-free public higher education system in Massachusetts, propelling the Commonwealth into another area of national leadership around education.

Jamie Eldridge is a state senator from Acton. Natalie Higgins is a state representative from Leominster. Carmine Gentile is a state representative from Sudbury.