Father’s Day Op-Ed: What My Father Gained — And Today’s Students Have Lost

by: Harrison Dale

My father, Roy, was born in the back of a taxicab in the Bronx in 1932 and died in Houston in 2020. A man of few words but sharp insight, he lived through nearly a century of upheaval – watching a world transform in ways that demanded adaptation, often at a punishing cost. Yet for all the challenges of his 87 years, there was one weight he never had to shoulder: the crushing burden of student debt.

The son of Jewish immigrants, my father grew up in a working-class home. His father labored in a factory; his mother kept house. The public schools he attended in New York were far from welcoming, but they prepared him for something extraordinary: a tuition-free education at City College of New York (CCNY). His only expenses were books and supplies.

CCNY was founded in 1847 as the “Free Academy”. Its first president, Dr. Horace Webster, declared it would prove whether “the children of the whole people” could receive a first-rate education, governed not by privilege, but by the will of the public. For over a century, the school lived up to that promise. It gave my father, and generations of strivers like him, a ladder to climb beyond the circumstances of his birth.

That ladder has since been kicked away.

My father’s tuition experience mirrors that of many legislators who oppose cutting student debt or tuition hikes, even though they paid little, or nothing, for their own education. While some didn’t attend tuition-free schools like my father, they still avoided today’s crushing debt burdens. House members in the past paid an average of $3,794 (about $8,487 today) for college; now, the same schools cost $24,143. Senators paid $3,423 ($9,480 today), but would face $28,727 now. Yet many of these lawmakers actively oppose making college affordable again – and do so proudly, claiming it’s about fairness. As they remind borrowers it’s ‘only fair’ to pay back what they borrowed, tuition costs continue to rise exponentially since their time at their alma maters.

The City University of New York (CUNY) system, which includes CCNY, once offered free tuition, peaking in 1970, when any NYC high school graduate could attend for free. But as author Ashley Dawson notes, this ended in a ‘deliberate racial and class assault’ under Nixon and Ford, partly driven by backlash to campus protests like CCNY’s 1969 demonstrations. Since then, tuition has soared nationwide. While CUNY remains more affordable than most, $6,930 in tuition for in-state students, the era of debt-free education, which transformed lives like my father’s, is long gone.

The ripple effects of my father’s debt-free education were profound. Drafted during the Korean War, his German language classes at CCNY landed him a posting in postwar Europe instead of the front lines – a twist of fate that may have saved his life. Later, he worked odd jobs to put himself through Indiana University Law School, launching a career as an attorney that spanned decades. One of his proudest moments was winning a landmark case to change Indiana’s tax code, securing widow’s benefits for a grieving client. He ultimately relocated to the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where he continued his legal career, and where I would ultimately be born.

None of this would have been possible without the leverage of an affordable education. Without it, he might never have left New York, never argued a case before a judge, never had a son who would write these words. His story is a testament to what happens when America invests in its people – not as a handout, but as a pact: Work hard, and the system will meet you halfway.

This Father’s Day, I think of the doors that opened for my dad simply because his country dared to believe in free, high-quality education. That belief didn’t make his life easy, but it made his dreams achievable. If we still cherish the idea of the American Dream, shouldn’t today’s students have the same chance?