I don't think free college works without some sort of strings attached work. It exists in Austria and the quality of students and colleges is terrible. Everybody and their dog go to colleges now dropping the quality to abysmal levels. There is no proper selection happening.
Unless you're trying to filter out poor people, removing tuition makes selection MORE fair. Intelligence and capability should be the only criteria for selection, not money.
Free higher education is not some imaginary ideal that doesn't exist yet. Take a look at universities in Sweden. If you're a citizen can attend great universities for free, No Strings Attached.
> Unless you're trying to filter out poor people, removing tuition makes selection MORE fair.
You can have tuitions and financing options for poor people. As far as I understand Harvard and other universities operate schemes like that.
> Intelligence and capability should be the only criteria for selection, not money.
More than intelligence and capability it should be motivation. Make the access to university too easy and you have idiots like me taking up valuable resources because they were not forced to make a proper decision about what's good for them.
>As far as I understand Harvard and other universities operate schemes like that.
Harvard is one of the richest non-corporate entities in the world, currently holding a ~$30 billion endowment. Saying "well, Harvard manages to do it" is not useful when talking about higher education on the whole, particularly public education.
>Make the access to university too easy and you have idiots like me taking up valuable resources because they were not forced to make a proper decision about what's good for them.
Even in for-pay schools, intro classes are full of idiots. People willing to sign up inherently have the motivation. If they don't also have the intelligence they should fail and not get to take subsequent classes. If your complaint is that dumb people are allowed to take classes, I don't think that's a problem, unless schools are somehow forced to grade on a curve or otherwise pad the work of students who are not performing well enough.
The quality issue is already happening in the US. With the loans available to almost anyone in conjunction with a "college = success" attitude, everyone who wants to go to college pretty much is, regardless of the ultimate down the road cost.
And these colleges want to retain students for the full 4+ years to get the maximum amount of loan money, so they make the course work easier and easier to keep retention high.
