Harris thinks college 'degree requirements' are 'unnecessary' but still wants taxpayers to pay for others' worth-less diplomas

Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris recently promised that, if elected president this November, she would end mandatory college degree requirements for some jobs with the federal government.

Harris made the announcement in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Sept. 13, saying: “As president, I will get rid of the unnecessary degree requirements for federal jobs to increase jobs for folks without a four-year degree.”

Harris may have said “unnecessary” but she and her political allies want taxpayers to foot the bill for other people’s tuition costs. Campus Reform reported that Harris tweeted in 2018 that, “It’s time we make college tuition-free once and for all.” 

Harris’s running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, signed a bill into law to permit illegal aliens to be considered for free college tuition at the state’s public institutes of higher education. Similarly, on Oct. 11, 2023, Rep. Teresa Fernandez (D-N.M.) introduced federal legislation to guarantee two free years of community college for students. 

These sentiments represent broader leftist policies on higher education. 

The Pew Research Center also discovered in an Aug. 11, 2021 report that “Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents overwhelmingly favor making college tuition free for all American students,” with 85 percent of respondents from these categories supporting the idea. 

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President Joe Biden has consistently pushed to make college education free. In remarks given on Feb. 21, Biden said that “while a college degree is still a ticket to a better life, that ticket is too expensive. And too many Americans are still saddled with unsustainable debt in exchange for a college degree.”

In April, 2021, socialist Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) helped introduce the College for All Plan legislation, which would, among other measures, make community college education free and allow students from families with an annual income lower than $125,000 to attend public colleges and universities without paying. Sanders proposed to pay for the legislation through controversial tax hikes. 

Before Biden and Sanders’s plans, then-president Barack Obama proposed the America’s College Promise plan in 2015 to allow millions of students to attend community colleges without paying tuition for a duration of two years. 

Yet a recent Annenberg Institute study claimed to prove that programs to make community college free for several years did not actually succeed in increasing the numbers of students who graduated with a degree.

But Harris’s promise also comes at a time when Americans are increasingly losing faith in higher education and the importance of college degrees. 

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A Gallup poll released on July 11, 2023, found that “Americans’ confidence in higher education has fallen to 36%, sharply lower than in two prior readings in 2015 (57%) and 2018 (48%).”

A report released this December by the Pew Research Center also revealed that men are increasingly giving up going to college in favor of other alternatives. 

“There’s been a big backlash against expensive 4-year colleges whereas trade schools or apprenticeships are on the rise. Men, especially white men, are much more likely to enter the trades or enter the technology industry, where a degree also isn’t required,” Athena Kan, the CEO of Dreambound, told Newsweek this December.

More recent research published this March has shown that high schoolers are also losing hope in the value of graduating from college. 

In 2023, certain states have dropped requirements for applicants to state government jobs to have college degrees, including Virginia and Pennsylvania. Massachusetts followed suit on Jan. 25 of this year. 

The trend also seems to have spread to the private sector, with a 2023 study allegedly showing that many companies have either stopped requiring applicants to possess a college degree or were planning to do so in the future. 

Campus Reform has reached out to the Kamala Harris campaign for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.