Did Rahm Emmanuel inadvertedly endorse Sanders this AM on Morning Joe?

[frazzled]

11. When he was talking about free college it was in response specifically

to the question regarding tomorrow's mayoral election in Chicago, and what advice he would have to the next person running the city about bringing people together. He went into a litany of things, and stressed putting education first to close the gap. Speaking about his administration's attempts in that regard, he mentioned expansion of school hours, universal K and Pre-K* instituted, and free COMMUNITY college. That's all true here now, but free community college (The City Colleges of Chicago comprise 7 city community colleges and some satellites) doesn't mean that anyone who wants to go to a community college here can go for free. You have to have a 3.0 average at graduation and show proficiency in English and Math. If you qualify, you get free tuition and free textbooks. Its a targeted program.

As far as I'm concerned, extending the idea to "free college for all" is a very under-examined concept. Each state has its own higher education system of public colleges and universities (some excellent, some not that great), and we have to ask how it would affect them in terms of:

1. State funding: as we all know, during budget crunches funding for higher education is often the first to be cut. If states need to raise tuition, is the federal government going to be willing to go along to pay for it, or will there be restrictions? We have to ask how the budgets of public universities would be affected.

2. Admission policies: they can't accept everyone, of course, because they have neither sufficient facilities nor staff, and not everyone is ready for a college education; but how might admission protocols be affected? Will schools start taking even more out-of-state applicants who can pay full load, thereby skirting the issue (they're doing far too much of that already). Will standards for admission be raised? I'm assuming that free public college would have to mean for residents within each state, unless we want to dismantle the entire system of state universities altogether and federalize all them all. That's a big ball 'o wax.

3. Affect on quality of education. How will it affect resources (research facilities, full-time tenured faculty, etc.)? If budgets are constrained (see 1, above), there will be less willingness to hire full-time tenure-track faculty, and less resources for innovation and technology and facilities.

At any rate, no: this was not an endorsement of any candidate or any specific policy. The only thing he kept stressing is that a candidate had to be able to beat Trump.

* I'm familiar with the public Pre-K because my granddaughter is currently attending it (very happily I might add, for both parents and child). It's not entirely universal yet however (or universally free). Spaces are open to income-eligible students first. My kids applied last year when their child was 3, but knew that they probably wouldn't get a spot, because these are reserved for the neediest kids first, as should be the case. And they indeed didn't get it. A spot did open up at the school for this academic year for them, but I'm not sure if they are paying a co-pay because of their income (I never asked). So it's not (yet) totally universal and not yet totally free for those above a certain income. But it's still a great start, especially for the most disadvantaged kids.