Tuition-Free Education

From, My Biased Coin we have an argument for a Tuition Free Harvard. While, this is a really great idea, I don’t think it goes far enough. I actually think that the goal of providing a reputable education at zero cost to the student can be accomplished.

Let’s first specialize the college to the field of financial engineering. An institution focusing on this field could easily be self-funding. The professors would split their time between running/creating financial models and teaching classes, while the more gifted or graduate students would be expected to help fund the university. The immediacy of hands-on work, and it’s importance to not only the institution but also to ones own salary would be an excellent motivator. Many of the graduate students would be highly sought after on Wall Street simply because of their experience and practical knowledge. All of this would lend to an enormous amount of prestige.

That prestige can then be leveraged to provide a highly competitive application process that would weed through the volumes of undergrad applicants looking for a free education (for a highly lucrative career). Unlike most universities, filtering out applications via grades and essays wouldn’t be enough. A formal, lengthy, and costly interview process would have to be followed, lest the real truth about elite colleges prematurely doom success.

After becoming self-sufficient the college could expand into other areas (mathematics, physics, bio, humanities, etc..) as budget allows. Even some of these areas could be formed as apprenticeships that fund their own departments. The Film majors would have to break-even financially, Art and Music majors required to exhibit their work and rake in profit through ticket sales, Mathematics can contract out to other departments, all fields can potentially benefit from directly encouraged entrepreneurialism.

Supposing that we can’t make a self-sufficient educational system, further funding can be acquired through a small 1–5% tax on the salaries of the recently graduated and employed, though such a policy obviously has major draw-backs, it might not be nearly as bad as student loans.