Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is firing back at Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos after she warned that calls by the radical left to “cancel” student are really a “socialist takeover” of higher education.

DeVos Slams ‘Free College’ Movement

DeVos had spoken out on Tuesday at the 2020 Federal Student Aid Training Conference to make the case against “total government control” of higher education.

“Policies should never entice students into greater debt. Nor should they put taxpayer dollars at greater risk. There are too many politicians today who support policy that does both,” DeVos said.

“Still more advance the truly insidious notion of government gift giving. We’ve heard shrill calls to ‘cancel,’ to ‘forgive,’ to ‘make it all free.’ Any innocuous label out there can’t obfuscate what it really is: wrong,” she continued. 

“The campaign for ‘free college’ is a matter of total government control,” she added. “Make no mistake: it is a socialist takeover of higher education. Now, depending on your personal politics, some of you might not find that notion as scary as I do. But mark my words: none of you would like the way it will work.”

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DeVos Doubles Down

Not stopping there, DeVos went on to say that college counselors could turn into essentially “rationers” of “state-approved higher-education options.” She then warned that students may not be eligible to attend certain schools or degree programs.

DeVos explained that there could be cases in which the “quota for ‘free college’ students is full,” which would force counselors to tell students “that they now have to pay full price.”

“Ultimately, nothing is ‘free.’ Somebody, somewhere pays the bill,” she said. “And the bill is coming due. What we do next in education policy—and in public policy writ large—will either break our already fragile economy, or it will unleash an age of achievement and prosperity the likes of which we’ve never seen.”

AOC Fires Back

This did not sit well with Ocasio-Cortez, who is a major proponent of “free college.”

“Tuition-free public college is a dangerous socialist takeover of higher ed, as opposed to the far superior capitalist takeover of higher ed, which reliably buries millions of Americans in trillions of dollars in debt & graduates them into low paying jobs without good healthcare,” the self-described Democratic Socialist tweeted in response to DeVos.

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DeVos will almost certainly be replaced if Joe Biden takes office in January, as he has several reforms for higher education planned.

These reforms include “eliminating tuition for all students attending public colleges and universities whose families have a household income of less than $125,000, improved student loan forgiveness for public servants, significantly cutting student loan payments to 5% of discretionary income over $25,000, and zero for those making less than $25,000,” according to Fox News.

This piece was written by James Samson on December 3, 2020. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

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