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“Americans are stupid.” If you’ve been lucky enough to trudge through the American public education system, you’ve probably heard the stereotypes at least once: American schools are going down the drain. Teacher salaries are being gutted. Asian countries are killing us academically.

It’s certainly enough to make you wonder why no one’s doing anything about it.

And the problems with our education system are no more acute than in the postsecondary world: colleges, universities, technical schools and the like. After high school, you’re not only going through a flawed system — you’re paying thousands of dollars every year to go through a flawed system. One that, ultimately, may not even get you a good job.

With the job market becoming more and more globalized every day, we’ve all heard the message: students today need a college education more than ever. But it’s getting harder every year to obtain one, and thus, President Obama’s proposal to allow full and half-time students (who can hold a 2.5 GPA or better) to attend two years of community college for free — at least, with tuition covered — based on a tax raise on capital gains and inherited assets (basically a tax increase on money made from investments or inheritance), has been brought to the political table. And we need it. Badly.

How badly are we doing, anyway?
American students are lagging behind at 17th in math, 17th in reading and 21st place in science based on PISA (Programme for International Assessment) test scores in 2012, which tests fifteen-year-old students on each subject across the world. The comparison is based on OECD (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries, which includes Japan, South Korea, the U.S. and most of Europe. Our education system starts becoming ineffective around the high school age, but the problems are compounded as you move up.

College completion rates in the U.S. are alarmingly low — only 39 percent of Americans who start a four year non-technical degree end up graduating, which ranks us 15th among the 28 OECD countries tracked in 2012. That number is largely due to America’s out-of-control tuition rates — over the past 30 years, average tuition rates at 4-year public universities have increased by over 250 percent. Based on a Pew Research Center survey, 48 percent of people aged 18 to 34 say they can’t afford to go to college.

But can government spending solve the problem?
The short answer is yes. While it’s debatable as to which stage of education is most important to spend on (some advocate focusing on early education, and for good reason; we get outspent by some of the most academically competitive nations), we’re going to need to improve college availability at some point — academic success at the K-12 level will scarcely matter if no one can hop over the financial barrier to higher education.

Look at it this way: in Germany, there is no such thing as a tuition payment. Let me repeat that: German schools charge zero tuition. Worldly readers might point out that college garners less total government and private spending (i.e. is cheaper) in Germany, but that is not the case in Norway, where tuition is also free. Tuition is also free in Austria, Sweden and Finland, while U.S. states have chosen to cut education spending by an average of 28 percent since 2008, despite the fact that the economy is on the upswing (and let’s not forget that Europe was hit by the recession as well).

For those concerned about the upper-class-targeted tax increases (an increase to 28 percent from 23.8 percent on capital gains, taxing inherited assets more and charging financial firms for “risky activity”), it’s worth nothing that the total amount the U.S. pays in taxes as percentage of GDP ranks 61st in the world, and the majority of developed nations — including those five — are taxing and spending more than we do. All with the exception of Norway have a lower GDP per capita (or economic activity per person) than we do in the U.S., so we could theoretically afford to tax even more than the other four do. Each country’s total tax burden is at least 1.5 times greater than ours.

Economics aside, all five countries have proven that giving students a tuition-free education is a priority for their government. The U.S. is just beginning to strive for tuition-free community college. It’s hardly an extreme proposal.

Part of the solution is efficient spending.
Spending more government money to get students into colleges is one way to attack the problem, but the root issue here is how much colleges have increased costs. Overall spending (meaning government spending and individual spending combined, whether from parents or students) on education in the U.S. is the highest in the world, yet we rank 13th among Western nations in how efficiently we spend. The average U.S. student on loans graduates $30,000 in debt. Part of Obama’s proposal includes grants for states that make efforts to make college more affordable, and it looks like there are certainly ways to do that. Think multi-million dollar college football coaches. Think hugely rich college president salaries. Think $350 million dollars in construction costs at CU-Boulder from 2012 to the end of 2015 alone. Hell, think of how much college education could have happened if we didn’t build an offensively unnecessary buff-shaped pool last year.

A long-term solution to the higher education problem in our country is going to ultimately require governments and schools to work together to cut our outrageous tuition costs. But for now, free tuition for community college education (without adding to our nation’s debt, mind you), is a plan worth passing. Obama’s plan would save students about $3,800 per year, more than the average tuition cost of community college; low-income students who also quality for Pell Grants would then be able to apply more aid to other costs such as book fees, housing, food and so on. For some students, that could mean completely free community college.

It’s not a cure-all, but it’s a step in the right direction. Just how big a step is it? It’s a plan worth nine million students getting better access to higher education. And that’s math that even we can understand.

Contact Opinion Section Editor Ellis Arnold at ellis.arnold@colorado.edu.