Recently CFCT president, Morley Winograd, and Executive Vice President of PSB Research Jack MacKenzie, sat down to talk about the Campaign for Free College Tuition with Frank News, a website that focused all of its May coverage on the issue of free college tuition. The in-depth, 60 Minutes style interview provided an opportunity to talk not only about why momentum for free college tuition continues to build in states across the country but how essential accomplishing our mission is in addressing economic inequality in American and strengthening our democracy.
Below we have excerpted some of our favorite moments from the extensive interview...
"We thought about America in the 21st century and it's economic challenges. Economic mobility became more and more difficult and less and less frequent. The barrier seemed to be the vast value placed on having an education in our new information age economy. And the barrier for that, of course, was the price of getting a higher education. Unless we did something about that price, we weren't going to fundamentally address structural economic inequality in America." -Morley Winograd
"The reason it works is not because of the money that people get, it's because of the cultural shift that the message causes around kitchen tables, or at high schools amongst students." - Morley Winograd
"These numbers are incredible. Our company polls on national issues all the time and the idea that anything debated in public discourse right now has 81% support, is incredible." - Jack MacKenzie on how well free college tuition polls
"Taken away from the theoretical level and down to the individual level, the question is not whether a state can afford to make their community colleges or all colleges tuition free, the question is, how can they not afford to do it?" - Morley Winograd
Our goal is to make higher education a possibility for every American, without regard to their financial circumstances.
We have a lot to do and not much time to do it, so your support is critical for our campaign to succeed. It’s with your investment that we can fundamentally reform how higher education is financed in this country, opening the doors to a more equitable society.
If you agree with our goal, our plan, and the urgency of the problem, we ask that you give what you can to help us write the next chapter in our nation’s history of continuously expanding access to universal, free education.
