Should college education be free?

Americans collectively owe $1.7 trillion in student debt. That's not a personal finance problem - it's an economic crisis. Young people are delaying homeownership, marriage, and having children because of debt. Meanwhile, Germany, Norway, and dozens of other countries offer free university education and have thriving economies. Public education through 12th grade was radical once too. It's time to extend that to the degrees the modern economy demands.

Germany also tracks students into vocational paths at age 10 and has far fewer universities. You can't cherry-pick the 'free' part without the selection mechanism. And the $1.7 trillion debt isn't from reasonable college costs - it's from administrative bloat, luxury amenities, and degree programs with no market value. Making college 'free' would pour gasoline on that fire while forcing plumbers and electricians to subsidize philosophy degrees through their taxes. That's regressive, not progressive.

The 'underwater basket weaving' argument is tired and wrong. The college wage premium is $900,000 over a lifetime - for ALL degree holders, not just STEM. And we already subsidize college through Pell Grants, tax credits, and state funding - just badly and inequitably. A unified free system would actually be more efficient. Besides, we found $800 billion for bank bailouts and $2 trillion for tax cuts that mostly benefited the wealthy. We can find money for education if we choose to.

A lifetime wage premium that's been shrinking every decade as degree holders flood the market and credentials inflate. And efficiency? Have you met a government program? The VA can't process claims in under 6 months, but we're going to efficiently run every university? The real solution is making existing college affordable: cap administrative growth, expand community colleges, incentivize employer training programs, and stop telling every 18-year-old that a four-year degree is the only path to success.

If government can’t run anything, someone should tell the GI Bill, which minted the American middle class; community colleges, which produce nurses and technicians on shoestring budgets; and the CHIPS Act, which is literally begging for more trained engineers we don’t have. You want efficiency? Make tuition-free public college a contract with knives: states get money only if they cap admin payrolls, publish program-level outcomes, cut remedial bottlenecks, and boost completion with tutoring and advising. New Mexico’s free college program juiced enrollment—especially for low-income and adult learners—because the price signal finally said “yes.” Tie the dollars to actual degrees and jobs, not to rock walls and a Vice Provost of Vibes. Paying for it without shaking down welders? Easy: claw back high-end tax giveaways, close the carried-interest loophole cosplay, and use IRS enforcement that’s already paying for itself. Add a graduate surtax on very high earners so those who reap the most chip in more—and build national service pathways that erase tuition for teachers, nurses, and mental health workers who serve where shortages are crushing communities. That’s not a handout; it’s a workforce strategy. And please stop pretending “just fix the market” will tame tuition. We tried vibes and price tags for 40 years while states disinvested and campuses filled the gap with loans. I’m offering a public option with teeth: free tuition at public colleges and technical programs, hard outcomes-based funding, and parallel investment in apprenticeships so a four-year isn’t the only golden ticket. You can keep chanting “efficiency”; I’ll take more nurses, more teachers, more chip fabs staffed, and fewer 28-year-olds reading amortization tables like they’re horoscopes.

Universal “free” turns into universal waiting lists. Ask England, which went from low fees to sky-high ones after the math on “free” blew up, or Sweden and Denmark, where free comes with fewer seats and glacial completion times. Germany manages by rationing slots—great, if you’re into bureaucratic Hunger Games. Scale that to the U.S. and you’ll crowd out the very strivers you claim to help while politically connected families hoover up scarce seats. That isn’t justice; it’s a velvet rope. There’s a cleaner path that doesn’t put colleges on a taxpayer IV drip forever. Shut off the blank-check lending that fuels price hikes—limit PLUS loans, and make colleges share the risk when graduates can’t repay. Publish program-level ROI so students can see which degrees pay and which are Pinterest boards with tuition. Let Pell follow students into short, stackable credentials and apprenticeships; subsidize employer training with outcomes bonuses; and pay completion bonuses to students who finish—because finishing is the ballgame and 40% don’t. Start earlier: fix K–12 so freshmen aren’t relearning algebra on the taxpayer’s dime. As for the “just tax the rich” fairy dust: the federal government is already spending over $1 trillion a year on interest. Add a new universal entitlement and watch every budget cycle become a tuition hostage situation, with politicians micromanaging curricula from statehouses like it’s culture-war karaoke. Keep universities pluralistic by keeping funding pluralistic—targeted aid, transparent outcomes, accountability with teeth, and real alternatives to a four-year chute. You want more nurses, teachers, and chip techs? Pay to produce those directly, don’t launder it through a promise that turns colleges into free, crowded daycare for young adults with worse advising and longer lines.

The FAFSA faceplant was a masterclass in how our Rube Goldberg financing machine punishes the very students we need. Months of delays, botched formulas, and first-gen kids ghosted by a bureaucratic escape room—then we say "trust this system to price your future." Free public tuition simplifies the plumbing: move the subsidy upfront, kill the loan origination hamster wheel, and stop paying servicers to mail bills for what should be a public good. The SAVE plan already turned repayment into a stealth subsidy; making tuition-free is cheaper and clearer than laundering support through decades of paperwork and interest. On capacity, the doomsday "waiting list" chant forgets we can buy more seats—just not the lazy-river kind. Fund nursing clinical slots the way we fund medical residencies. Tie federal matching dollars to actual expansion in shortage fields—teachers, nurses, chip techs—and to licensure pass rates and time-to-degree. CUNY’s ASAP showed that wraparound advising doubles completion for low-income students; scale that, and stop pretending a price tag alone moves needles. The money comes with sharp elbows: no admiral suites, publish program-level outcomes, cap overhead, and give students frictionless transfer across public campuses so a bad advising semester doesn’t become a stranded cost. Fairness isn’t forcing welders to buy wall art; it’s building a workforce pipeline that welders’ kids can enter without debt. Finance it with high-end tax cleanup (carried interest cosplay, we see you), a graduate surtax on ultra-high incomes, and service-for-scholarship routes that send tuition to zero for critical jobs in shortage zip codes. Pair free tuition with targeted living stipends for the poorest, dual enrollment that shaves semesters off, and credit articulation that stops making students pay to retake Algebra Groundhog Day. Call it the G.I. Bill for the supply chain: fewer loans, faster degrees, more people in the jobs we literally cannot staff under the status quo.

The FAFSA meltdown is Exhibit A for why handing Washington the steering wheel is a bad hobby. We turned the annual doorway to college into a year-long bug hunt, then your solution is…add more wires. Free tuition misdiagnoses the problem: the pain isn’t just sticker price, it’s living costs, glacial completion, remediation hell, and opaque outcomes. Tennessee Promise juiced enrollment but completion barely budged; New York’s Excelsior gets headlines, then students face paperwork cliffs and credit traps. Making it “free” without fixing throughput is like announcing free airline tickets to an airport with one functioning runway. Do precision, not performative generosity. Make Workforce Pell real and fast—bipartisan short-term Pell for programs with verified earnings. Extend gainful employment-style debt-to-earnings tests to every program, not just for-profits, and add institutional risk-sharing so schools eat part of the losses when grads can’t repay. Fund clinical capacity directly for nursing and allied health; pay outcomes bonuses for licensure and on-time graduation; and require universal credit transfer across public systems so credits don’t evaporate on contact. Put hard caps on non-instructional payroll growth, merge duplicative departments, and drop the arms race for amenities. You want seats? Stop larding them with vice presidencies of vibes. Debt should be manageable, not magic. Move to automatic payroll withholding IBR (see Australia) so repayment is painless and predictable, ban Parent PLUS from moonlighting as a second mortgage, and publish program-level ROI on the first page of every acceptance letter. Scale employer-paid degrees (Walmart, Amazon) and apprenticeships with real wages; give workers portable "skills wallets" with tax-advantaged contributions they control. Keep universities pluralistic and independent instead of turning them into regulated utilities where every budget cycle becomes culture-war karaoke. With interest costs north of $1 trillion a year, universal “free” is a fiscal booby trap. Buy results—completion, earnings, licensure—don’t write a blank check that crowds halls without fixing why too many students never cross the stage.

Your “precision” agenda is a coupon book for a house fire. We’ve had a decade of dashboards, ROI widgets, and repayment yoga; meanwhile, SCOTUS nuked one-time relief and the SAVE Band-Aid is doing triage on a broken financing bone. Make tuition-free public college the default, then wire in teeth: outcomes-based funding that rewards on-time completion and licensure pass rates, automatic common course numbering and transfer passports like Florida and California, and use-it-or-lose-it dollars for campuses that fail to expand high-demand seats. Stop making 19-year-olds assemble an aid IKEA when what they need is a door that says “walk in—zero at the register.” Capacity isn’t magic; it’s money and rules. Pay hospitals and clinics for preceptors the way we fund medical residencies, stand up paid teacher residencies so candidates aren’t student-teaching on ramen, and let community colleges run year-round cohorts with eight-week blocks and embedded tutoring. HRSA’s recent nursing workforce grants showed demand is there—open the clinical funnel and it fills. And scale what works for throughput: the CUNY ASAP model doubled graduation rates and proved in Ohio that wraparound advising plus transit stipends beats vibes. Give every public system a transfer concierge and kill the “credits evaporate on contact” scam that pads time-to-degree. Fiscal pearl-clutching? In-state public tuition is the affordable slice—making that free costs tens of billions, not Mars money. Swap today’s kludge (AOTC/LLC tax breaks, 529 goodies, loan servicing subsidies) for upfront zero-tuition, add a sliver graduate surtax on ultra-high earners, clean up carried interest cosplay, and carve in HBCUs/MSIs with capacity grants and per-student top-ups so we don’t Walmart-ize mission-driven colleges. You keep laminating spreadsheets while students pawn their twenties; I’m offering a simple price, a bigger pipeline for nurses/teachers/chip techs, and a funding formula that pays for degrees, not a Dean of Drone Shows.

Make public college free and watch collateral damage pile up: HBCUs and mission-driven privates get hollowed out by a taxpayer-subsidized price tag they can’t match. That’s not equity—it’s Walmart-ization. HBCUs are a tiny slice of campuses but punch way above their weight in producing Black STEM grads; drain them of students and you shred an engine of mobility. Keep funding pluralistic: targeted aid that follows the student, not a universal freebie that tilts the field toward massive state systems and away from the very institutions that overproduce teachers, nurses, and engineers relative to their budgets. You want seats and speed? Buy results directly. Fund clinical capacity for nursing and allied health with per-licensure bonuses. Require universal transfer within public systems with common numbering—and then attach minimum college-readiness thresholds for “free” seats so we don’t turn first year into a taxpayer-funded remediation loop. Pay for eight-week terms, credit for prior learning, and competency-based programs that let working adults finish—WGU and Georgia Tech’s $7k OMSCS proved you can scale quality without “free.” Expand apprenticeships that pay a salary while learning, and fast-track credentials we actually need; if we’re desperate for nurses tomorrow, streamline cross-border licensing and visas instead of promising free degrees that mature in four years. And about that checkbook: states ride booms and busts. In 2009, California slammed brakes on UC/CSU enrollment; layer a “right” to free college on top and you’ve built a political hostage situation. With federal interest costs approaching $1 trillion a year, a universal entitlement invites mid-decade tuition caps, hiring freezes, and culture-war micromanagement. Do the adult thing: risk-sharing when grads can’t repay, payroll-withholding IBR so debt is predictable, ROI disclosure on page one of every acceptance, and Lifelong Learning Accounts with a federal match for every worker, not just 18-year-olds. Stop selling a Netflix plan for college when the ISP is the problem; buy throughput, earnings, and licensure, not headlines and longer lines.