In one of the worst hatchet jobs I have ever seen, David Fahrenthold writes a factually false op-ed piece which is published on the front page of the Oct. 2 Washington Post. Because Sanders has proposed free tuition for every student at a public college or university, Fahrenthold contends that this means "colleges would be run by government rules." Fahrenthold goes on to say that Sanders' big spending is not just about money, "it's also about control." How is giving tuition grants to students going to allow the government to run the colleges? If anything, it would empower students—the people with the money—to run the colleges. But that would never happen since colleges and universities are run by boards of trustees. Perhaps Fahrenthold should have found out something about college governance before writing his opinion piece.
Years ago, when I first began teaching at a state university in New England, tuition was free—the university was largely funded by the state. But a Republican governor in 1970 ended that. But it made no difference in the governance of the university whether there was free tuition or not—the trustees still ran the university. The only change was that students were expected to fund the university even if they had to go seriously into debt.
Fahrenthold also says that Sanders wants to create a "new Social Security (sic) benefit" that would allow people to take 12 weeks off to care for a new baby or deal with a serious illness in the family. This would not be a government benefit, but paid for by employers. Such time off is the practice throughout Europe where apparently they value family more than we do.