Until the Wisconsin job market gets itself together, a one-size-fits-all plan like the “Wisconsin Promise” is not adequate to ensure every student has the opportunity to come out of college debt-free.

It’s no secret that there’s been a good deal of talk in Madison about affordable college. You hear the usual complaints from students walking down University Avenue on their way to class, which are undoubtedly relatable to anyone who has ever opened a tuition statement.

Gov. Scott Walker has his own scheme to tackle this seemingly insurmountable issue, but democratic state legislators have their own plans to gain eternal glory in the hearts of college students all over Wisconsin.

Walker proposes plan to make college more affordable, but no financial aid increase for UW System

This “Wisconsin Promise“ proposal, in which the state of Wisconsin would give grants to all in-state students, which would cover the expenses of books, tuition and even housing, would ideally result in students strolling out of graduation debt-free.

So on the surface, the “Wisconsin Promise” sounds pretty peachy.

But not all that glitters is gold. The catch with this plan is the fact that graduates need to find a job in Wisconsin within the first three months after graduation and must work in the state for the next three years. Students must also hold a 3.0 GPA throughout their college career. If these requirements aren’t accomplished, then this wonderful monetary handout just turns into another loan to be paid back to the state.

I get it, nothing is free in this world, but the fact that the difference between students getting hired within three months is the difference between coming out of college debt-free or having a loan seems rather extreme.

In 2010, 81 percent of in-state students remained in Wisconsin after graduation so that part of the deal doesn’t seem too impossible. 

But this number varied between different disciplines and schools. Here are a couple examples:

The University of Wisconsin only kept 69 percent of in-state graduates in Wisconsin that year, and only 71 percent of engineers ended up sticking around the dairyland after graduation. That’s 12 and 10 percent less than the average number of graduates that were able to stay in Wisconsin. That’s quite a few cracks in this supposedly all-encompassing plan, through which many hardworking students could fall.

This rigidness in requirements becomes more of an issue when considering who gets hired right out of college. While 93 percent of engineers were either employed or in graduate school within six months after graduation in 2014, only 40 percent of those majoring in humanities were able to find a job. Under the current stipulations of the “Wisconsin Promise,” almost two times the amount of engineers would come out of school debt-free compared to humanity majors.

So this plan might not be as promising as it seems on the surface.

The fact of the matter is, until the job market levels the playing field for all in-state undergraduates coming out of state schools, a plan to make college debt-free cannot be so generic that it refuses to acknowledge the very real differences in post-graduation outcomes between different majors. In today’s job market, an affordable college plan must be flexible so that one discipline, or even one student, has less of a chance to succeed.

This one-size-fits-all plan can lead to inequality between majors, which means unequal opportunity between students. But isn’t the whole point of debt-free college to provide equal opportunity for all students?

While the “Wisconsin Promise” proposal may not exactly be an end-all cure for college debt, it is definitely a step in the right direction.

Phil Michaelson ([email protected]) is a sophomore majoring in biomedical engineering.