Bay State's new revolution: free tuition

"I have many friends who are not [citizens] but score in the top 25th percentile," says Cesar Diaz, who just graduated from East Boston High School and protested Romney's plan with several immigrant groups at the State House last week. "What happens to them?"

Shawn Feddeman, the governor's press secretary, defends the program as one that rewards deserving, hardworking students: "One of the goals of the scholarships is to draw our top-performing high school graduates to public colleges and universities. It raises the overall quality of those institutions."

Romney estimates that of the 17,000 Massachusetts students who would qualify for free state tuition, about 6,800 of them would take it - a number that could cost the state $50 million a year. Currently, the state awards about $95 million of aid a year based on need.

And yet even need-based scholarships are implicitly merit-based, says Barbara Beatty, who chairs the education department at Wellesley College in Wellesley, Mass., and has studied testing for years.

"Most of the elite private institutions are need-based, but then you have to be able to get in," she says. "So those scholarships are already going to the kids who are doing well enough to get in - because of their hard efforts, their good grades.... And those students had to overcome more obstacles, and those obstacles are real."

Dr. Beatty wonders whether children from low-income families have access to the tutorials that many well-off parents pay for to help students prepare for the state's test, known as the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS.

But she says Romney is correct to assume that many students who would qualify for free state tuition and can afford an elite private school education would opt for the private school - which would save the state money (since the scholarship money wouldn't be collected by all who qualify) while still encouraging all students to study harder. "That reasoning is fair," she says.

Dr. Vedder, author of "Going Broke by Degree: Why College Costs Too Much," agrees. But the economist worries that, by offering full tuition to the students, the state is providing schools with an "open invitation" to hike tuition prices even higher.

"Let's say you're at [the University of Massachusetts in] Amherst and tuition is $2,000, and they're hesitant to raise it," he says. "That's a good school, so most of the kids will go to Amherst, and the school will just raise tuition, and the state will find itself putting up a lot more money for these scholarships, and it will have a negative effect on those who aren't top 25-ers."

But in the end, he says, states are right to direct education spending toward students and not schools. "When you give the money to schools, they'll use the money however they wish, and they're not too accountable to the students," he says. "Giving the money to the students leads to a greater attention to student needs because the kids control the money a little more."

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