While being a provocative headline, the devil of course is in the details. Clearly, the country could benefit by more education — or so that is one generally accepted premise. Of course many of the jobs out there don’t require higher education — and many of our debt-burdened graduates can’t seem to find jobs. So, maybe they are getting a useless education? The wrong subjects? Four year liberal arts degrees instead of coding? Yet that isn’t the real problem. Education costs are spiraling out of control. Much of our higher ed system is still based on brick and mortar. I spent 30 years inside a major educational institution (public state university) and they have kept to the notion that students have to be taught in hallowed halls, by the hundreds per class in brick and limestone towers. Every year another 10 or 20 million dollar building and its maintenance is added, yet the enrollment only inches up. Several attempts have been made to move toward online classes — and all have been stymied by professors (researchers who have to teach). Oh there are a few, forward looking groups, trying hard to push for more efficient teaching methods but so far this this major state university, they have failed.

So this is the environment in which you want to start providing free tuition? How are you going to keep costs from inflating astronomically? Set a limit on the cost of tuition? Force these entrenched, administratively over-burdened institutions to provide an “economy” class education? Dump the Ivory institutions and encourage junior colleges to take the load(over-burdening them in an instant)?

Much of our higher ed system has failed us. If they hadn’t, reasonable, usable education would be affordable. Throwing money at a broken system isn’t a solution.