Puerto Ricans celebrated in San Juan after Gov. Ricardo A. Rosselló announced his resignation.

Dear Commons Community,

Last night, Ricardo A. Rosselló of Puerto Rico announced his resignation as governor, conceding that he could no longer remain in power after a people’s uprising and looming impeachment proceedings had derailed his administration.  As reported in the New York Times:

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday was the day that Washington watchers have been waiting for as Special Counsel Robert Mueller testified before two House Committees.  There was little in the way of new revelations and both Democrats and Republicans claimed their side won.  I feel confident that Mueller’s testimony did not sway many people’s opinions of his investigation and Trump’s cupability. So where do we go from here.  New York Times columnist, Charles Blow, gives us his opinion in a piece entitled, Mueller Testified. Now What?  and essentially examines whether these hearings  will be enough for Democratic leaders to pursue impeachment.  Not likely!

Below is his entire column.

Tony

———————————————————–

Mueller Testified. Now What?

Will the results of this congressional hearing be enough for the Democratic leaders to pursue impeachment?

By Charles M. Blow

Well folks, there you have it. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has completed his testimony. There are no more shoes to drop.

He has confirmed, publicly, the major details of his voluminous report. Our 2016 election came under massive attack by the Russians, and those efforts continue. The goal was to help Trump’s electoral prospects. People in the Trump campaign welcomed the efforts. Trump stood to gain financially from relationships with Russia through the building of a Trump Tower in Moscow.

He also confirmed the multiple ways that Trump sought to obstruct his investigation. He clarified that his office had not made a determination as to when Trump had committed a crime, because of internal Department of Justice guidance that states a sitting president couldn’t be indicted. He affirmed that Trump could be charged with obstruction of justice.

And, in what may be the most resonant sound bite, he underscored, contrary to the lie Trump keeps telling, that Trump was in fact not fully exonerated by his findings.

This is the hearing the Democratic leadership seemed to suggest they were waiting for and needed to determine whether or not to move forward to open an impeachment.

Even though they knew that Mueller would not go beyond the finding and scope of his report — he said as much before being summoned to the hill — they made Americans believe that the mere act of him saying out loud and on television what most Americans refused to take the time to read would massively move public attention.

I’m not sure how or to what degree Wednesday’s theater will sway the public. I suspect that the impact will be negligible. Republicans are fully in the tank for Trump. There are a sizable group of people who identify as independent but in fact are not.

Most independents lean right or left, consistently so, and vote that way. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey report released in March found that of the 38 percent of self-described independents, only 7 percent declined to lean right or left.

And, the Democratic leadership has basically left liberals in a lurch. They refused to say upfront, forthrightly and consistently that Trump had committed crimes in office that rose to the level of impeachable offenses. They never made that case to the American people, particularly those in their base.

They wanted someone or something to force their hand. They waited on the Mueller report. That wasn’t enough. They waited for Wednesday’s hearing. I doubt that will be enough.

They told us that there was such a thing as a “failed impeachment,” meaning that if the Senate was unlikely to convict and remove, an impeachment vote in the House was meaningless.

They told us that impeachment was too “divisive” and should not be undertaken unless the impetus was “overwhelming and bipartisan.”

People were told that opening an impeachment inquiry would be a mistake because that’s what Trump wants to energize his base — particularly a failure to convict in the Senate — and that it would virtually guarantee his re-election.

None of this washes with me. While Democrats worry about tearing the country apart, Trump is doing just that in real time. His base doesn’t need further energizing; they’re juiced up on sexism, xenophobia, racism and nationalism.

The truth is that the Democratic leadership has no intention whatsoever of opening an impeachment inquiry unless they are literally forced to do so. They know that Trump deserves to be impeached, but principle is being made to take a back seat to politics. They are scared of unsettling the people who voted for their newly elected moderates. They are scared that they might upset the white people who voted for Trump’s racism but might be open to considering a Democrat.

They think that there is a way to acquiesce their way into acceptance. They think that if Democrats are simply quiet and don’t make a fuss, that this fever will break and voters will be relieved of Trump’s corruption.

To me, they look like sniveling tacticians, more concerned with gaming things out that light us up.

Our political establishment has a moral duty to chastise this president for his corrupt and criminal behavior, even if it doesn’t lead to his removal. The Republicans have long ago made clear that they have abdicated their moral responsibility. But the Democratic leadership is dangling the possibility of moving forward before its base, which is hungry for action.

The leadership is conducting a long-term tease as a way of dampening a revolt. In truth, this is precisely where they want us to be: riled up but not in full revolt, angry that Trump is still in office without feeling that there is any option to remove him other than at the ballot.

Maybe history may judge this political calculation to have been a savvy one. Maybe. Or maybe, history will judge the anemic response to Trump’s steamrolling our laws, rules and conventions as setting the most dangerous of precedents for the future of the country, all out of fear.

Which of those historical judgments would look most devastating when committed to the page and entered into the record?

Dear Commons Community,

Thousands of emergency workers who rushed to the rubble of the World Trade Center after the Sept. 11 attacks will be granted health care and other compensation for the rest of their lives. The Senate yesterday gave final approval to legislation that would care permanently for those who have grown deathly ill from the toxins of ground zero.

White House officials said President Trump was expected to sign it. Even before the Senate’s 97-to-2 vote was gaveled to a close, retired New York firefighters and police officers, advocates and Jon Stewart, the comedian who championed the legislation, had leapt to their feet in the usually hushed chamber to lead a standing ovation.

Outside, they choked back tears, embraced and clapped one another on the back.

“The country has moved on, and rightfully so,” said Michael O’Connell, a retired lieutenant with the New York Fire Department. But “it’s in front of our eyes,” he added. “We’re in hospices. We’re seeing people pass away right in front of our very eyes.”

“It’s nice to know that they’ll be taken care of,” he concluded.

The legislation would ensure that the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund is funded for the next seven decades at a cost of $10.2 billion over the next 10 years. It would offer financial stability as the number of medical claims from emergency personnel who worked for months in Lower Manhattan after the 2001 attacks surpasses 22,000.

While September 11, 2001 will always be part of our psyche, it is good to see that those who risked their lives and health will be taken care of.

Tony

Sam Altman

Dear Commons Community,

On Monday, it was announced that Microsoft will invest $1 billion in OpenAI, the artificial intelligence lab, Sam Altman  helped to create in 2015 with Elon Musk, the chief executive of the electric carmaker Tesla.  Mr. Musk has since left the lab to concentrate on A.I. ambitions at Tesla. Last year, Mr. Altman remade OpenAI, originally founded as a nonprofit, into a for-profit company so it could more aggressively pursue financing. Altman’s goal with Microsoft funding is to build an artificial general intelligence or A.G.I. machine that can do anything the human brain can do.

A.G.I. is the most sophisticated level of A.I. and is considered to be minimally decades away from development.  The five levels of A.I. have been described as follows:

1. Internet AI – makes recommendations based on Internet activity (i.e. Amazon);
2. Business AI – uses data that companies and other organizations routinely capture for commercial and procedural activities to make predictions (i.e., bank loan approval, insurance fraud, medical prognosis);
3. Perception AI – uses data from the physical world to make predictions using sensors and smart devices (i.e., weather, traffic flow, facial recognition)
4. Autonomous AI – uses all the capabilities of the previous stages plus directs and shapes the world around it (i.e., self-driving cars, assembly line production control)
5. Artificial General Intelligence – AI functions similar to the human brain and can perform any intellectual task.       (Lee, K.F. (2018).  AI super-powers:  China, Silicon Valley, and the new world order.  Boston:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.)

While there are examples and working models of the first four levels of A.I. in evidence, A.G.I. has not yet been demonstrated.  There are systems that can recognize images, identify spoken words, and translate between languages with an accuracy that was not possible just a few years ago. But this does not mean that A.G.I. is near or even that it is possible.

“We are no closer to A.G.I. than we have ever been,” said Oren Etzioni, the chief executive of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, a research lab in Seattle.

Geoffrey Hinton, the Google researcher who recently won the Turing Award — often called the Nobel Prize of computing — for his contributions to artificial intelligence over the past several years, was recently asked about the race to A.G.I.

“It’s too big a problem,” he said. “I’d much rather focus on something where you can figure out how you might solve it.”

I agree with Etzioni and Hinton that there are no known algorithms for artificial general intelligence or a clear route to get there.  Regardless, Microsoft’s investment is something to be observed to see what might develop in the future.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Various media are reporting that hundreds of thousands of people swept through the capital of Puerto Rico yesterday shutting down highways and paralyzing much of the city in the latest in a series of furious protests over the island’s embattled governor, Ricardo Rosselló.

The protest was one of the largest ever seen on the island, as Puerto Ricans streamed into the capital on buses — and some on planes from the mainland — in a spontaneous eruption of fury over the years of recession, mismanagement, natural disaster and corruption that have fueled a recent exodus.

Demonstrators launched impromptu line dances, paraded on horseback, banged pots and carried banners along several miles of highway, many shouting: “Ricky, renuncia, el pueblo te repudia!” — Ricky, resign, the people reject you.

Demonstrations continued until after 11 p.m., when the police began firing tear gas and rubber bullets into the crowd in an attempt to clear the streets in front of the governor’s mansion.

Mr. Rosselló said on Sunday that he would step down from the leadership of his party and pledged not to run for re-election in 2020. But the governor, a 40-year-old former biomedical scientist and businessman, is growing increasingly isolated as a series of influential political leaders, some from his own party, have called on him to accede to public demands for an immediate resignation.

“Governor, Puerto Rico Demands Your Resignation,” the island’s largest-circulation daily newspaper, El Nuevo Día, said in an unusual front-page editorial on Monday.

The newspaper, citing an analysis by a geographer, said more than 500,000 people attended Monday’s protest, which later in the day moved from the highway to the area outside the governor’s residence. The organizers had not yet cited an attendance estimate, and the police said they did not plan to offer one.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

As expected, the University of Alaska’s Board of Regents declared financial exigency yesterday, calling it a sad but necessary step given the budget crisis created by a 41-percent cut in the university’s budget from the state.  The vote was 10 to 1 in favor of the declaration, which system leaders said was needed to allow the system to downsize rapidly. That could include closing programs and laying off tenured faculty members.  As reported in The Chronicle of Higher Education:

“It’s hard for me to contemplate the path we may have to go down,” said John Davies, the board’s chairman. “But we do have a fiduciary responsibility to be sure the institution survives. Unfortunately, I think we’re grappling with survival.”

Members who said they were voting reluctantly in favor of the motion pointed out that it was a tool, not a plan for making cuts, and that it could be modified, restricted, or withdrawn if lawmakers restored at least some of the budget.

“I’d celebrate to the stars if things got reversed, but I don’t think it’s likely,” Davies said.

If the university does nothing, it will run out of state money by February, some of the regents pointed out. The cuts affect the 2020 fiscal year, which started on July 1.

Last week the regents delayed a financial-exigency vote until the end of the month, hoping that by then it would be clear whether lawmakers would restore some money to the system after failing to gather enough votes to override Gov. Michael J. Dunleavy’s spending cuts, spurred by line-item vetoes.

Even if they did, the regents said, Dunleavy could once again pull out his veto pen.

But then Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the university’s credit rating by three notches, which the university system’s president, James R. Johnsen, said, “makes bonding or borrowing money substantially more difficult and expensive.”

University leaders have said the impact of Dunleavy’s cuts could eventually exceed $200 million — even more than the $136 million cut this fiscal year.

One of the regents, Cachet Garrett, wiped tears from her eyes as she called the vote the hardest she’d cast. “I promised the students of Alaska that I would represent them and they have asked me to vote yes,” she said. “The faculty who I adore and admire have asked me to vote no.”

Ultimately, she had to prioritize students. But she stressed that both faculty members and students need to be included in the decisions about how the budgets are cut.

The regents are considering various options for shrinking the university system, which includes three separately accredited universities as well as 13 community campuses. Among the options are shutting down campuses, designating universities as “lead” campuses for different programs, and consolidating the system into a single accredited university. One of the greatest challenges is providing access to students who are sparsely scattered across a vast geographic area, some of which is inaccessible by land.”

Consolidation of colleges is very much a possibility and would follow an option taken recently in Wisconsin and Connecticut.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Yesterday, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation announced a commitment of nearly $50 million for research to better understand how technology is transforming our democracy and the way we receive and engage with information. Amidst a growing debate over technology’s role in our democracy, these investments will help understand how society is equipped to make evidence-based decisions to govern and manage the now-digital “public square.”  As detailed at the Knight Foundation website:

“Knight’s investment will fund new, cross-disciplinary research at 11 American universities and research institutions, including the creation of five new centers of study — each reflecting different approaches to understanding the future of democracy in a digital age (see descriptions and Table A below). In addition, Knight has opened a new funding opportunity for policy and legal research addressing major, ongoing debates about the rules that should govern social media and technology companies. 

“We’re living the most profound change in how we communicate with each other since Gutenberg invented the printing press,” said Alberto Ibargüen, Knight Foundation president. “The internet has changed our lives and is changing our democracy. We have to take a step back and a step forward. To understand what is actually happening, we need independent research and insights based on data, not emotion and invective. To go forward, citizens must be engaged, and including university communities in the debate is a step in that direction.”

The selected research centers and projects were chosen through an open request for proposals process launched last year, which elicited more than 100 applications. The institutions are both public and private, located across the country, and represent a range of academic disciplines. All share a common goal: identifying how society can adapt to the ways in which digital technology has revolutionized the dissemination and consumption of information. 

“Our democracy is at an inflection point. Technology is fundamentally changing our society, yet we are flying blind. There is a need for innovative approaches that recognize the complexity of these challenges by joining computational sciences, social sciences and the humanities,” said Sam Gill, Knight vice president for communities and impact. “These resources are intended to spark collaborations that meet the urgent demand for new insights and ideas.”

These awards are intended to catalyze additional resources to support this critical area of inquiry and enable universities and research institutions to match Knight’s contribution. Many of the centers and projects have already garnered support and commitments from additional funders: The Charles Koch Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies and Siegel Family Endowment have pledged support to the new center at New York University, which also draws support from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Omidyar Network is supporting the Thurman Arnold Project at Yale University. Hewlett and Luminate are supporting the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and Hewlett is also supporting the new center at the University of Washington.

Funding for these research centers and projects are part of an unprecedented $300 million commitment made by Knight Foundation in February to strengthen journalism and democracy. Knight continues to invite individual and institutional funders to join in this opportunity and support scalable organizations committed to serving communities at the local level. 

The full list of investments by Knight includes:

 Supporting the creation of cross-disciplinary research centers: 

• Carnegie Mellon University: The Center for Informed Democracy and Social Cyber-Security (IDeaS) ($5 million): To expand the study of information manipulation through online platforms; develop approaches to counter disinformation; and build and educate a community of scholars, practitioners and policymakers to foster an informed democratic society.
• The George Washington University: The Institute for Data, Democracy, and Politics ($5 million): To help the public, journalists, and policymakers understand digital media’s influence on national dialogue and opinion, and to develop sound solutions to disinformation.  
• New York University: The Center for Social Media and Politics ($5 million): To directly study the impact of social media on politics and to develop new methods and technology tools to analyze the impact of social media on democracy. 
• University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: The Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life ($5 million): To examine the impact of the digital information environment — especially the influence of social media platforms such as Facebook and YouTube — on democracy and other sociopolitical systems.
• University of Washington: Center for an Informed Public ($5 million): To study how misinformation and disinformation flow through information systems; how information translates into values, beliefs and actions; and how researchers, educators, librarians and policymakers can intervene in these processes to foster a more informed society. 

Supporting existing research initiatives and projects: 

• Data & Society Research Institute ($3 million): To provide general support to Data & Society’s research program on digital information systems and knowledge communities, exploring both fragmentation of knowledge and ways of building resilience to socio-technical threats, and aiming to inform new approaches to the governance and design of data-centric and automated technologies with empirical findings.
• Indiana University: The Observatory on Social Media ($3 million): To improve the study of the impact of the internet on democracy by increasing the scale, quality and availability of social media data and analytical tools to study that data. 
• Stanford University: The Project on Democracy and the Internet ($2 million): To support the growth of Stanford’s Project on Democracy and the Internet, which houses field-leading study of the challenges that democracy faces in the digital age and what reforms are needed — in companies and through regulation — to ensure that democracy can survive the internet.
• University of Texas at Austin: The Center for Media Engagement ($2.5 million): To support the expansion of the Center for Media Engagement as it develops the study of how newsrooms, scholars, platforms, and public policy entities can address issues of polarization in society.
• University of Wisconsin – Madison: The Center for Communication and Civic Renewal ($1 million): To support the completion of a 10-year study on the Wisconsin information landscape and to support the development of tools to study state and regional communication systems — and their impact on democracy — in the digital age. 
• Yale University: The Project on Governing the Digital Public Sphere ($2 million): To support the Yale Information Society Project’s work on how law should regulate and social media companies should govern the digital public sphere. 
• Yale University: The Thurman Arnold Project ($200,000): To support the creation of the Thurman Arnold Project at the Yale School of Management to study competition and antitrust issues in digital marketplaces.

Supporting policy and legal research: 

In addition to these significant investments in scholarly research, Knight has dedicated $11 million for future investments, to be announced later this year, that support policy and legal research on issues including internet governance and the implications of technology for democracy. 

Some of these future investments will be made through an open funding opportunity to expand fundamental research on the norms, rights and responsibilities that govern digital services, in particular social media. The opportunity targets scholars focused on free expression and content moderation on digital platforms, the structure of the social media marketplace (including issues of competition and antitrust), and new paradigms for regulatory response.”

Congratulations to the Knight Foundation for this initiative. Research in this area is surely needed.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press has an article describing a new law recently passed in Oregon that will allow students to take “mental health days” just as they would sick days, expanding the reasons for excused school absences to include mental or behavioral health.  As reported:

“..don’t call it coddling. The students behind the measure say it’s meant to change the stigma around mental health in a state that has some of the United States’ highest suicide rates. Mental health experts say it is one of the first state laws to explicitly instruct schools to treat mental health and physical health equally, and it comes at a time educators are increasingly considering the emotional health of students. Utah passed a similar law last year.

Oregon’s bill, signed by Gov. Kate Brown last month, represents one of the few wins for youth activists from around the state who were unusually active at the Capitol this year. Along with expanded mental health services, they lobbied for legislation to strengthen gun control and lower the voting age, both of which failed.

Haily Hardcastle, an 18-year-old from the Portland suburb of Sherwood who helped champion the mental health bill, said she and other student leaders were partly motivated by the national youth-led movement that followed last year’s Parkland, Florida, school shooting.

“We were inspired by Parkland in the sense that it showed us that young people can totally change the political conversation,” she said. “Just like those movements, this bill is something completely coming from the youth.”

Hardcastle, who plans to attend the University of Oregon in the fall, said she and fellow youth leaders drafted the measure to respond to a mental health crisis in schools and to “encourage kids to admit when they’re struggling.”

Debbie Plotnik, executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Mental Health America, said implementing the idea in schools was important step in challenging the way society approaches mental health issues.

“The first step to confront this crisis is to reduce the stigma around it,” Plotnik said. “We need to say it’s just as OK to take care for mental health reasons as it is to care for a broken bone or a physical illness.”

Suicide is Oregon’s second leading cause of death among those ages 10 to 34, according to data from the state Health Authority. Nearly 17% of eighth-graders reported seriously contemplating taking their lives within the past 12 months.

And it’s not just an Oregon problem, although the state does have a suicide rate 40% higher than the national average. The national suicide rate has also been on the rise and recently hit a 50-year high, climbing more than 30% since 1999, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Previously, schools were obliged to excuse only absences related to physical illnesses. At many schools, absences must be excused to make up missed tests or avoid detention.

Under state law, students can have up to five absences excused in a three month period. Anything more requires a written excuse to the principal.

Despite little public opposition from lawmakers, Hardcastle said she’s received pushback from some parents who say the legislation wasn’t necessary, as students can already take mental health days by lying or pretending to be sick. Other opponents have said the law will encourage students to find more excuses to miss school in a state that also suffers from one of the worst absenteeism rates in the nation. More than 1 in 6 children missed at least 10% of school days in the 2015-2016 school year, according to state data.

But those criticisms miss the point of the bill, said Hardcastle. Students are going to take the same amount of days off from school with or without the new law, but they might be less likely to lie about why they’re taking take a day off if schools formally recognize mental health in their attendance policies.

“Why should we encourage lying to our parents and teachers?” she said. “Being open to adults about our mental health promotes positive dialogue that could help kids get the help they need.”

Parents Roxanne and Jason Wilson agree, and say the law might have helped save their 14-year-old daughter, Chloe, who took her life in February 2018.

The Eugene-based couple said the funny and bubbly teen had dreams of becoming a surgeon but faced bullying after coming out as bisexual in middle school.

When things at school were particularly rough, Chloe would pretend to be sick to stay home.

“Because she lied to get her absences excused, we didn’t get to have those mental health conversations that could have saved her life,” said Roxanne, who now manages a local suicide prevention program.

Chloe was one of five teens to die by suicide in the Eugene area that month. Roxanne and Jason, who moved to the rural city of Dayton following their daughter’s death, worry that those against the bill underestimate the hardships today’s teens face.

“Calling kids coddled or sensitive will just further discourage them from being honest with adults about what they’re going through,” Jason Wilson said. “We need to do everything we can to open up that dialogue between parents and children when it comes to mental health.”

Very interesting law and one that will likely be emulated in other states.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

On his MSNBC program last week, Lawrence O’Donnell interviewed the columnist and author, George Will,  who has long been one of the saner voices for conservative America.  Mr. Will made a case for why Donald Trump needs to be defeated in 2020.  He cited ballooning deficits, tariffs, trade wars, and the overall demeanor that Trump has brought to the White House as the major reasons.  He also commented that in a post-Trump era, America will likely see more emulators of  “The Donald” running for high political office.  The interview starts at the 3:58 mark.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

David Deming, the director of the Malcolm Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, has an op-ed in today’s New York Times entitled,  Tuition-Free College Could Cost Less Than You Think.  He examines the issue from an economic point of view and concludes that a free public college education is within financial reach of the states and country.  The issue of free public college education is getting renewed attention especially from the Democratic candidates hoping to become the party’s flag-bearer in the 2020 presidential election.  Not everyone supports the concept.  See, for example, Five reasons why free college doesn’t make the grade by Michael Horn of the Clayton Christensen Institute.  Here is Deming’s analysis.

“While college tuition is high at many private schools, median in-state tuition at four-year public universities was only $8,738 in the 2017-18 academic year.

Still, that was an increase of about $1,100, or 15 percent, since 2010 after adjusting for inflation. Tuition at public two-year colleges was $3,304 in 2017-18, and has increased by about $450, or 16 percent, inflation-adjusted, over the same period. Seventy-five percent of college students attend public institutions. And for many of them, even this tuition is too high to pay without help.

Consider, though, that in 2016 (the most recent year for which detailed expenditures are available), the federal government spent $91 billion on policies that subsidized college attendance. That is more than the $79 billion in total tuition and fee revenue for public institutions. At least some of the $91 billion could be shifted into making public institutions tuition-free.

First, about $37 billion of the federal money went toward tuition tax credits and other tax benefits, which disproportionately helped wealthier families, who were likely to send their children to college without government help. I’m not proposing that these benefits be cut — but in a financial pinch, some of this aid could be repurposed to allow for tuition-free public institutions, which would help poorer people more.

Second, $41 billion in federal spending went toward aid for low-income students and military veterans, while $13 billion subsidized interest payments on student loans while students were enrolled in college.

If tuition payments were eliminated, students at public colleges would have less need for these programs. (College costs also include room and board, books and supplies, and other living expenses, so tuition-free college would not eliminate the need for financial aid, even at public schools.)

In short, at least some — and perhaps all — of the cost of universal tuition-free public higher education could be defrayed by redeploying money that the government is already spending.

Some form of tuition-free college already exists or soon will be in place in 13 states, and some of this cost would not need to be duplicated to achieve universal tuition-free public college.

The existing tuition-free state programs apply almost exclusively to two-year colleges (New York’s Excelsior scholarship is an exception), and they are funded by increasingly tight state budgets, which threaten their long-term viability.

The federal government has much deeper pockets than the states do, but it mostly reduces tuition costs indirectly by providing financial aid to low-income students. The largest program is the Pell Grant, which provides a maximum award of about $6,000 per year.

Thanks to various forms of financial aid, for the neediest students, some public colleges are already tuition-free. So why not simply expand financial aid to provide larger dollar amounts to more students? The problem is that need-based aid requires a determination of eligibility, and students usually don’t know what they will pay for college until after they decide to apply.

Pell Grant aid helps low-income students attend and graduate from college, but it has little impact on the decision to enroll in the first place. Financial aid is helpful but only for low-income students who can successfully navigate the system.

The simple promise of zero tuition, whatever your family income, is in itself an effective nudge that is likely to attract more low-income students to college. That is unequivocally a good thing. But such a promise will also attract some wealthier students, who would go to college anyway, so reduced tuition would be just a windfall for them.

This may not be an ideal use of scarce public resources but, on balance, I think that is acceptable because of the enormous benefits of college attendance for those who are less advantaged.

Consider that tuition-free public college has already drawn many more low-income students into college in places where it is offered, such as the state of Tennessee and the city of Kalamazoo, Mich. If some of these students complete a degree, they are likely to increase their lifetime earnings — a boon that is generally much more valuable than a few years of reduced tuition. What’s more, higher earnings will also increase tax revenues, further cutting the long-run costs to the government.

But there is a danger that the promise of free college could become a political mantra rather than a serious attempt at reform. A particularly worrisome possibility is that states will reduce tuition to zero without committing any additional resources to higher education, and simply cut spending.

We could end up making college worse by making it free. This might not even produce more college graduates: Spending cuts at public institutions tend to result in lower graduation rates, studies by me and by others suggest.

It is important to lay the groundwork for success by providing more resources, but targeting them carefully. One idea — proposed by Senator Brian Schatz, Democrat of Hawaii, and Representative Mark Pocan, Democrat of Wisconsin — is a federal matching grant to public institutions in states with tuition-free public college. (I proposed a similar idea in a 2017 paper for the Hamilton Project, an economic policy initiative at the Brookings Institution.)

A federal match on the first, say, $5,000 of state funding per student would be proportionally larger for colleges that spend less on education. This directs resources to public colleges that serve most poor students.

With matching grants, the federal government could build in safeguards to ensure the money was well-spent. For example, the money could be restricted to core categories like teacher salaries and academic counseling, rather than administration.

The long-term payoff of these policies could be enormous. Considerable research shows that public and private benefits greatly exceed the costs when students are nudged toward obtaining a college degree. Yet at the moment, only 37 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 29 have a four-year college degree, and completion rates are lower for poorer students.

Dollars and cents aside, there is a strong ethical case for devoting more public spending to policies that encourage poorer students to get a college education, giving them some of the opportunities that richer students receive as a matter of birth.

But budget hawks should know that making all public colleges tuition-free could be relatively inexpensive — or even revenue-neutral — if this initiative replaced other less-effective programs.”

Our early experience here in New York with the tuition-free Excelsior Program supports Deming’s analysis.  My sense is that free college is not a question of whether but of when.

Tony