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college for all act
'We Have a Better Idea': Sanders Unveils College for All Act as Trump Targets Higher Education
"Instead of increasing the cost of college in order to give more tax breaks to billionaires," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, "we are going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free."
May 21, 2025
As U.S. President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans move to gut federal student aid programs to help fund tax cuts for the rich, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday will introduce legislation aimed at making public colleges and universities tuition-free for most Americans.
The College for All Act of 2025, shared exclusively with Common Dreams ahead of its official introduction, would eliminate public college and university tuition and fees for students from married households earning $300,000 or less per year or single households earning $150,000 or less.
The legislation would also make public community colleges and trade schools tuition-free for all students, and provide grants to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and other institutions to eliminate tuition and fees for eligible students.
Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who will introduce identical companion legislation in the House, presented the bill as a direct counter to Trump and congressional Republicans, whose emerging reconciliation package and proposed federal budget for the coming fiscal year would enact deep cuts to federal higher education funding—while delivering huge tax breaks to the richest Americans.
"Instead of increasing the cost of college in order to give more tax breaks to billionaires, we have a better idea," said Sanders. "We are going to make public colleges and universities tuition-free so that working-class students can succeed and are not burdened with a lifetime of debt."
Jayapal, a senior House Democratic whip and chair emerita of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said that "Congress can and must ensure that working families never have to take out crushing loans to pursue an education."
"The College for All Act will free students from a lifetime of debt, invest in working people, and transform higher education across America by making a degree more accessible to poor and working families across this country," she added. "This is more important now than ever as Trump continues to attack education in this country through attempts to strip funding from universities and to dismantle the Department of Education."
"Young people should not have to go deeply into debt to get the education they and our nation need. We must make public colleges and universities tuition-free."
The legislation stands no chance of passing the Republican-controlled Congress, but it represents an alternative vision for higher education that has proven extremely popular with the American public. A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found that 63% of U.S. adults support making public colleges and universities tuition-free.
More recent polling has shown similar support, with Democratic voters overwhelmingly backing the proposal as higher education costs rise and students graduate saddled with massive student loan debt.
Sanders plans to introduce the legislation Wednesday morning at a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP Committee hearing on the state of higher education in the U.S., where public college costs more per student than in any other country except Luxembourg, according to the Education Data Initiative.
"Making public colleges and universities tuition-free is not a radical idea," declares a summary of the College for All Act provided by Sanders' office. "Other wealthy countries like France, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland made their public colleges and universities tuition-free or virtually tuition-free several years ago."
"Over 50 years ago, many of our most prestigious public colleges and universities were also tuition-free or virtually tuition-free," the summary notes. "In a competitive global economy, we need the best-educated workforce in the world. Young people should not have to go deeply into debt to get the education they and our nation need. We must make public colleges and universities tuition-free."
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Sanders, Jayapal Re-Up Plan to Make College Tuition-Free by Taxing Wall Street Speculation
"In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, a higher education should be a right for all, not a privilege for the few," Sanders argued.
Jun 14, 2023
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Pramila Jayapal on Wednesday reintroduced legislation that would make college tuition-free for working families and pay for it with a tax on Wall Street speculation.
"Today, this country tells young people to get the best education they can, and then saddles them for decades with crushing student loan debt. To my mind, that does not make any sense whatsoever," Sanders (I-Vt.)—who chairs the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee—said in a statement. "In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, a higher education should be a right for all, not a privilege for the few."
First introduced in 2015, the College for All Act would "guarantee tuition-free community college for all students and allow students from single households earning up to $125,000 a year, and married households earning up to $250,000 a year, to attend college without fear of being saddled with student loan debt," according to a statement from Sanders' office.
The legislation would also double the maximum Pell Grant award from $7,395 to $14,790 for the 2024-25 school year; establish a $10 billion grant program for "states participating in the federal-state partnership to scale evidence-based practices and strategies"; and double funding for historically Black colleges and universities and tribal institutions of higher learning—among other funding increases.
\u201cOur higher education system is broken \u2013 you shouldn\u2019t have to bury yourself in a lifetime of debt just to get a college degree.\n\nThat\u2019s why I\u2019m introducing my College For All Act with @SenSanders. Let\u2019s make education accessible and affordable to every American family.\u201d— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@Rep. Pramila Jayapal) 1686753411
Sanders' office called the proposal "the most substantial expansion of higher education access since the Great Society and President Lyndon B. Johnson's Higher Education Act of 1965."
Sanders asserted:
It is absolutely unacceptable that hundreds of thousands of bright young Americans do not get a higher education each year, not because they are unqualified, but because their family does not have enough money. In the 21st century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. The time is long overdue to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and debt-free for working families. Education is one of the keys to a successful democracy and we must make it easier, not harder, for young people to obtain the degrees they have worked so hard for.
The revived College for All Act comes amid uncertainty over the fate of President Joe Biden's plan to relieve the student debt burden of tens of millions of Americans, which is in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court and its right-wing supermajority.
\u201c"The proposal eliminates tuition and fees at public colleges and universities for families making up to $125,000 \u2014 nearly 80 percent of families \u2014 while also making community college free for every person across the country."\nhttps://t.co/5eP81vqteD\u201d— Our Revolution (@Our Revolution) 1686765814
"As millions of borrowers wait in limbo to see if the Supreme Court will allow President Biden's student debt cancellation plan to lift millions out of debt, Congress must work to ensure that working families never have to take out these crushing loans in the first place," said Jayapal (D-Wash.), who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
"I'm proud to lead this legislation with Sen. Sanders that would free students from a lifetime of debt and transform our country's higher education system by ensuring that everyone can afford to pursue a college degree," she added.
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Higher Ed for Bernie
As presidential candidate offers bold proposals, supporters mobilize to reclaim higher education as a public good
Oct 22, 2015
The proposal put forth by U.S. senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders for free public higher education has spurred a new initiative called 'Higher Ed for Bernie' that looks to operate as a kind of movement wing of his campaign, focused on free higher education. Supporters of the effort, in addition to Reed and Gautney, include Cornel West, Frances Fox Piven, RoseAnn DeMoro, Robert McChesney, Liza Featherstone and a long list of others. The following statement of purpose and support was initiated and signed by faculty, students, staff, parents and others concerned with the state of student debt and public education and who endorse both Bernie Sanders' candidacy and his proposal for free higher education for all.
Our system of public higher education is in a state of slow-moving crisis. Decades of the fiction that it is possible to "do more with less" have supported steadily deepening cuts in state funding for higher education. State governments increasingly retrench what was not very long ago considered a vital public good and pass costs on to students and their families in the form of escalating tuition and fees and to faculty and staff in the form of income stagnation and speed-up.
"Three decades of politicians from both parties have been too willing, even eager, to subordinate the aspirations, security, and opportunities of the American people on the altar of the billionaire class's whims and greed."
In some states - e.g., Wisconsin, North Carolina, Kansas, and Louisiana - right-wing governors have gone after higher education with a vengeance that reveals motives that extend beyond even shortsighted cost-cutting and preference for upward redistribution. The likes of Scott Walker, Pat McCrory, Sam Brownback, and Bobby Jindal are militant ideologues, who oppose public education on principle. They would just as soon, to paraphrase right-wing anti-tax guru Grover Norquist, shrink their states' public colleges and universities until they are "small enough to drown in a bathtub."
The assault on higher education comes from several directions. Anti-secular political conservatives would replace public schools at all levels with religious institutions. Privatizers see in this public good as in many others an opportunity for great profits by looting the public's resources. Other political reactionaries are threatened by the very idea of an educated citizenry and would rather roll back the clock to a time when access to higher education was restricted only to the children of the affluent.
The result is that pursuit of higher education is becoming more and more difficult for more and more Americans, and the existence of public colleges and universities themselves is imperiled.
It is past time to reverse this irrational and antisocial trend. Three decades of politicians from both parties have been too willing, even eager, to subordinate the aspirations, security, and opportunities of the American people on the altar of the billionaire class's whims and greed. The assaults on public higher education stem from the same sources as attacks on public K-12 education, on the U.S. Postal Service and other public services, the same sources that created the abomination of a health care system dominated by predatory insurance and pharmaceutical industries, and the obscenity of a ballooning, increasingly privatized carceral state.
The 2016 presidential race can be our opportunity to turn the tide. The Bernie Sanders campaign is committed to a clear and emphatic reassertion of the importance of public goods and the public sector that provides them, including public higher education in particular. His College for All Act would eliminate undergraduate tuition at 4-year public colleges and universities, thus making a powerful statement about the central importance of higher education as a public good. It would also take serious steps to relieve and reverse the crippling burden of student loan debt and the exploitation of adjunct labor. And it would strengthen faculty tenure systems, themselves under attack by conservative forces.
Bernie Sanders is the only candidate seeking the nomination from either party who has made such a serious and concrete proposal and demonstrated such resolute commitment to higher education. That is high among the reasons we as faculty, students, staff, parents and others concerned with higher education endorse and support his campaign enthusiastically and urge others who share those concerns to join with us.
For the most recent list of signatories to this statement, or to sign on, please visit 'Higher Education for Bernie' here or email HigherEd@berniesanders.com
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