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Americans are more likely to support tuition-free college programs if there's no income cap and students have to graduate high school with at least a C average, according to a new study.
Elizabeth Bell, an assistant professor of political science at Miami University, surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,500 Americans in 2017 to draw these conclusions. She found that most people, regardless of political ideologies, supported the idea of free college.
But other factors could sway their opinions.
For example, when Bell presented an option where a student's family income must be $50,000 or less to qualify for free college, respondents were 3.3 percentage points less likely to view the policy as fair. When the option included a requirement for the student to have a minimum high school GPA of 2.0 for eligibility, respondents were 6.5 percentage points more likely to view the policy as fair.
To answer why this is so, Bell points to research that found policy makers and the public are more likely to support benefits for people who are already powerful, and thus considered deserving, in an article she wrote for The Conversation.
