During the 2016 Democratic primaries, Bernie Sanders advocated a new federal entitlement making U.S. public colleges and universities tuition free. Since then, Democratic Socialists and some mainstream Democrats have begun supporting such a proposal. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Bronx, NY candidate running on a socialist platform who became a media star after unseating a senior House Democrat in a primary upset, has made it one of her central campaign issues.
Sanders argues that countries like Germany, Finland, Norway and Sweden have successfully made college free, but there are some major differences between the education systems of continental Europe and those of the United States that make Sanders's proposal impractical.
According to data collected by the U.S. Census, 90 percent of adults between ages 25 and 34 have a high school degree or its equivalent, and after high school about two-thirds of adults went on to one of America's more than 4,500 institutions of higher education.
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