Think college is expensive now? Wait till Clinton makes it ‘free’

How to make college more affordable?

Hillary Clinton’s answer tells a lot about how she might approach domestic and economic policy issues if she wins the presidency. It’s not a particularly encouraging picture.

Clinton’s plan shows signs of influence from two of the more radical elements in recent American politics: the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and the presidential campaign of the socialist senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders.

The “occupy” movement, which took over a park in Lower Manhattan and also erupted in other American cities, was largely a protest against student debt. Clinton is promising an executive order that would give borrowers a three-month “time-out” from student loan payments, forgive all student debt after 20 years, and forgive or defer loans for “aspiring entrepreneurs,” teachers and AmeriCorps members.

Sanders had promised to make public college free for everyone. Clinton is promising that “families with income up to $125,000 will pay no tuition at in-state public colleges and universities.”

She says she’ll pay for that by raising taxes on “high-income taxpayers.”

For someone running on a “stronger together” slogan and accusing her Republican rival, Donald Trump, of running a divisive campaign, the Clinton plan sure creates a lot of divisive wedges. It will accentuate the divide between public and private colleges.

It also splits Americans into a variety of groups.

There are those who do what Clinton wants them to do, and will get her help — teachers, “aspiring entrepreneurs,” families who earn less than $125,000 a year.

And then there’s everyone else — “high income taxpayers” — who get stuck with the bill.

Like so many government programs, Clinton’s college plan risks creating perverse incentives and unintended consequences. If a husband and wife each earning $124,000 a year get a divorce the year their twin children are applying to college, then remarry the year the children graduate, do they get the free college deal? Or does their $248,000 combined income render them “high-income taxpayers” who deserve presidential punishment?

Is the $125,000 income ceiling the same for a family that has one child in college and for another with three children? What about one family that has $80,000 a year in income but a lot of assets — say, $2 million in lottery winnings — versus another family that has $130,000 a year in income but no savings and a lot of debt?

Clinton pays lip service to asking colleges to help control costs, but the more the government takes over paying, the less incentive parents and students have to shop around for an efficient education provider.

Clinton herself has contributed to the expense of education by charging exorbitant fees to speak on campus. She reportedly earned $225,000 to speak at the UNLV in 2014 and $275,000 to speak at the State University of New York, Buffalo in 2013.

In the rest of the economy, managers are constantly trying to cut costs. Airplane seats are closer together to cram more passengers into a plane. ATMs replace bank tellers.

A New York Times article recently reported how Georgia Tech is offering an online master’s degree in computer science for $7,000, far less than the $40,000 or $50,000 that competing universities charge for the same degree. This innovation is, alas, more the exception than the rule. Why would a student get the $7,000 degree instead of the $40,000 one when the price for both is “free” because the government is paying, or when, even if you borrow the money, the debt gets forgiven or deferred if you do what Hillary Clinton wants?

Meanwhile, aggressive government regulation is running for-profit colleges out of business and forcing the non-profits to hire expensive lawyers and former government officials to figure out how to comply.

Want lower-cost colleges? Clinton’s approach is subsidies and redistribution. A better bet would be deregulation, competition and technological innovation.

Ira Stoll is editor of FutureOfCapitalism.com and author of “JFK: Conservative.” His column appears Sunday.