For one, “free” isn’t “free”. It’s shorthand for the government making somebody else pay. For another, the whole idea is a mess. If you want to ruin college, unleash public debt, and wreck the lives of many young people, make college “free”.
Two things stand out in this latest crusade for “free”. First, the idea defiles colleges by roping into them marginal students which turns colleges into something resembling failing high schools, and lets loose a form of hyper-inflation … of degrees. It’s like the idea of making a country richer (more educated) simply by printing more dollars (degrees).
Second, it’s as if we can suspend the laws of human nature, as if there are no such laws. Economics can’t exist without them. It’s economics that is really being ridden out of the picture. “Free” means “subsidies”, and subsidies make anything more expensive. Take dairy price supports, or ethanol subsidies, and apply to college. You’ll end up with warehouses full of degrees, many of which have more to do with political activism than practicality and enlightenment. Watch costs escalate.
More troubling is the greater acceptance of the nonsense among normally conservative constituencies. The popularity of the balderdash is proof of debased education and the ascent of the juvenile love for “free” into age groups that should know better.
*”Why States Should Abandon the ‘Free College’ Movement”, Jennifer E. Walsh, NRO, 3/19/2018, https://www.nationalreview.com/…/why-states-should-abandon…/
RogerG