Free college tuition for all! says presidential candidate Bernie Sanders [View all]

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At least one presidential candidate would like to make college tuition-free.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, a Vermont Independent, introduced legislation Tuesday that would get rid of tuition at four-year public colleges and universities. The presidential candidate’s proposal is the latest indication that the idea of minimizing the cost of college, which some progressive Democrats have been pushing for months, will at the very least become part of a mainstream political discussion.

Under Sanders’s proposal, the federal government would foot two-thirds of the bill for students and the states would pay for the rest. Sanders would cover the federal costs through what he calls a “Wall Street speculation fee,” essentially a tax imposed on investment houses, hedge funds and others, for transactions involving trades of stocks, bonds and derivatives. States would have to come up with their own sources of funding.

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Sanders’s bill also includes proposals to mitigate the cost of student loans, including allowing borrowers to refinance student loans to take advantage of lower interest rates. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts Democrat, is leading a charge in Congress to allow student loan borrowers to refinance.




http://www.marketwatch.com/story/free-college-tuition-for-all-says-presidential-candidate-bernie-sanders-2015-05-19