THE soaring cost of college — a 1,225 percent increase since 1978, nearly twice the rate of the rise in health care costs — is such a problem for most families that politicians across the ideological spectrum are actually taking notice.
President Obama has proposed making two years of community college free. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, speaking in Iowa last week, raised the stakes by arguing that federal and state governments should split the cost of reducing tuition at public universities and colleges by more than 50 percent. And Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin just proposed a two-year extension of the tuition freeze currently in place at the University of Wisconsin, which he coupled with a 13 percent cut in state aid and the suggestion that professors teach one more course per semester.