Unfortunately, there’s a fringe among some American ed-school academics and educational activists who have agitated strongly for “everyone must go to college”. A corollary to that is the idea that selective admissions period is “too elitist”.
Ironic considering that was the prevailing mentality among many 19th century Americans and politicians regarding admission policies to West Point. Especially those from the southern and western states where reasonable college-prep education was hit-or-miss even among the upper/upper-middle classes unless they were willing to send their sons off to private boarding schools in the NE/Mid-Atlantic states. They’ve even made similar arguments that if their taxes were paying for it, their sons should be accepted even if their educational preparation was such they were likely to flunk out within a semester or two.
Those from that fringe were the folks who lobbied and got the ill-conceived open-admissions policies implemented in CCNY/CUNY in 1969 and attempted to do the same to the NYC Specialized High Schools in the early '70s before the NY state legislature passed a policy to put a stop to it.
Their fringe idea is essentially an AMERICAN one as most other societies with the possible exception of Mainland China during its decade-long Cultural Revolution(1966-1976)* may have had free or exceedingly low cost higher ed…but they don’t like to have it pointed out to them that IT WASN’T FOR ALL. Only for those who met/exceeded a highly selective academic admissions standards which wasn’t set to the academically LCD.
- With the exception of what's now regarded as a disastrous period by many even within the Chinese Communist Party, Mainland China before and after the Cultural Revolution had an educational system which academically tracked students aggressively and where college admissions was exceedingly competitive and only for the high academic achievers.