Betsy DeVos rips Democrats who push free college tuition: 'We know somebody has to pay for it'
DeVos said push for free college was essentially a 'government takeover of higher education'
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Free college tuition is not a viable idea, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos told "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday.
“First of all, there’s nothing free. We know somebody has to pay for it,” DeVos said.
DeVos said the push for free college was essentially a "government takeover of higher education" that would dissolve quality and choice.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}“American higher education is the envy of the world," she said. "It has to continue to be an open market place for innovation and creativity and, in fact, we’re seeing more now today than ever before that has to continue to grow and flourish, not be taken over by government and rationed in a way that is really going to stifle the future of too many young people."
Meanwhile, President-elect Joe Biden is facing mounting pressure from progressives to cancel student loan debt on his first day in the White House – but doing so may disproportionately benefit wealthy Americans, according to a new analysis.
A working paper published Monday by the University of Chicago’s Becker Friedman Institute for Economics shows that erasing all student loan debt would distribute $192 billion to the top 20 percent of earners in the U.S., but just $29 billion to the bottom 20 percent of U.S. households.
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Under a universal loan forgiveness program, the average individual among the top-earning borrowers would receive $5,944 in forgiveness, while those with the lowest incomes would receive $1,070 in forgiveness, according to the study authored by economists Sylvain Catherine and Constantine Yannelis.
FOX Business' Megan Henney contributed to this report.