I think free college for all is a terrible idea. Not everyone belongs in college. Frankly, not everyone deserves to go to college, and resources would be wasted on many students who aren’t ready for or wouldn’t appreciate a free education. If you haven’t worked hard in high school, why should you get a free college education? If college is going to be free, I think we have to go to a tracking system. I’m not entirely sure that’s a bad thing, as many students would be better off getting some kind of job training rather than college. It is a complete sea change, though, and one I don’t think we’re ready for at this point.
Everything not private is central government if you define it that way. Central government decided our daughter would not attend UCLA.
The issue should be “free college for some.”
My understanding is that the proposal is for those who also qualify. It isn’t Free College For All!!! Wasn’t it a proposal for two years of community college? So, no, college isn’t for everyone and everyone will not be going to college if this happens someday. It’s helpful to explore the details of the actual issue rather than the soundbites.
Sorry, but the question is inherently political. You’re asking about government policy, after all, including potentially massive government expenditures. Might as well ask “Free health care for all? (not political),” or “Bigger military? (not political).” See what I mean?
UCLA is a decentralized govt. and your DD had the option to apply - not necessarily so in Germany.
The revised issue - should the public fund college for some “appropriate” students?
From the late 1940s to the 1980s, the apparent consensus among state governments in the US was yes (with very low in-state tuition; often out-of-state tuition was low to entice students to move to the state for education and then stay to contribute to the economy), on the idea that a better educated workforce would increase economic activity and benefit all (including those without college degrees, as well as the state government which would receive increased tax revenues from the increased economic activity). But now, many state governments are racing to defund state universities as fast as possible.
This can be talked about without getting into politics, which would be things like debating who would pay for it, how to pay for it and so forth, that is the politics of it. There are some fundamental issues here I see:
1)The idea of ‘college for all’ is problematic, it assumes that college is a necessarity for everyone.We already are seeing that, a lot of the for profit schools/online schools are basically operating on that kind of idea, and they primarily are attracting people who otherwise wouldn’t go to college with the promise of being ‘college educated’, and those diplomas to be blunt aren’t worth much.
On the other hand, there should be good alternatives to college, tech training, skills training, are all possible, and there could be the equivalent of state colleges that would be the trade schools to teach these skills. This isn’t unknown, many high school districts had vocational training high schools, so why shouldn’t we have the equivalent?
2)Does it have to be free? One of the things that has come out in recent years is despite all the claims in increases in financial aid, many modest income students are finding themselves , no matter even if they are qualified, locked out of going to a good school. Community colleges are all well and good, but what if a kid is talented but poor, should they be at a community college that likely is going to be almost remedial level for them? Rather than being free, I would argue that we need to find ways to make college affordable, for kids with limited means being free, for others being rationalized to what they make and get rid of the student loans, which are basically a sop to the banks more than anything else to me.
3)I also agree that watering down college isn’t the answer. The city college system in NYC was a classic example of it, CCNY was the flagship, and for many years it was free (it is still very cheap). It was known as the poor man’s Harvard, and at one point had the greatest concentration of Nobel prize winners among its alumni. The problem was in the 60’s they decided that was unfair (you needed a certain GPA to get into CCNY), and they made the city univesity system “open enrollment”, and it took the system under (it has had a resurgence, they dropped the open enrollment and guarantee admission only to the 2 year colleges). CCNY graduated a lot of people over the years who did amazing things, and it is an argument of what it can do, lot of really poor kids got educations that way.
4)State schools were supposed to be that resource, but between budget cutbacks, and state schools looking to full pay students (often foreign), or wanting to be “elite” (University of Virginia comes to mind), they are becoming too pricey for many students, as in state tuition has soared and more importantly, slots are being given to either foreign or out of state students who pay more.
As a philosophic argument, I think that it should be “should advanced training be affordable”, and that is where I say yes, and it needs to be where we aren’t loading kids down with debt to do it, I think education is important enough that it shouldn’t be a way for banks to make money. The nitty gritty of how to do this is political, in the mechanics of it, how do we avoid for example where those with modest means are fed into the equivalent of the University of Phoenix and the like (the online programs) because those are ‘affordable’ and then have those who are more well off benefit from increased aid (for example, at “elite” public universities) to make them affordable. There are also questions about the education system that is an even bigger can of worms, where people from modest means (rural areas, inner cities) often are coming from areas where the schools stink, so if we make the affordable colleges rigorous, could they even do the work? Those are the mechanics and where the politics come in.
On the other hand, my answer to the question about the cost of such a comprehensive education plan, college and;or advanced vocational training, is what is the cost of not having that? Just ask people in rural areas that are seeing what the inner city has seen for years, what they are seeing, and ask yourself if it is worth the cost.
German high school grads can apply to universities; admittance is based on objective Abitur score (varies by school). If accepted it’s free (obviously paid by taxes). Living expenses are not covered.
My friend graduated from a large city high school in the UK. Here was her process: they take a test in 10th grade which identifies qualified students and use the results to redirect their remaining high school path. In 11th grade those identified as potential college students must select their future college major and begin taking what will be about 1 1/2 years of focused prerequisites for that specific degree program. Come senior year, they identify 5 (and only 5) schools they would like to attend. If desiring Oxford or Cambridge, they are only allowed to chose one or the other. The GC’s are free to override the selections based on their test scores & grades. The students write one personal statement (specific to how their HS prep work has prepared them to be successful in pursuit of the selected major) which will be sent along with a common app via the GC to all 5 colleges.
She hated it. Having the HS predetermine your education path based on one test, forced to choose your future as a 17 year old, feeling locked in to one major because you have too much invested to make a change and no options to take liberal ed courses once you arrive at the university because you must finish up in 3 years.
If you wanted the free education, you had to play by their rules. Would the average American college applicant agree to play?
Those who can’t afford a US college education might. Would the Brit who got the free education prefer to pay US fees?
I don’t know why posters are coming up with examples hitching the idea of testing with a free college education.
You can have a free college education without the testing. I don’t remember the testing aspect included in recent free college education argument. Maybe because it wasn’t.
The argument about including testing with a free college education falls flat. If you don’t want a college education to be free, just say you don’t want a college education to be free. I don’t think a college education should be free.
See. I said it…without the bs. 
It’s likely due to contrasting with the European system’s attempt at the objective fairness of one measurement for all.
Perhaps the reference to testing is because if it were free, and just as necessary as a high school diploma for jobs, there would be so many students that the system would be overwhelmed, therefore the necessity of limiting spots. And since upper income kids generally are better educated and have more resources and parental help, they would test better and it would end up to be a system where the poor pay for the wealthier to go to college for free.
Testing and making life decisions when people are young would be a huge mistake for us.
There is no reason to contrast our system with the European’s system.
The whole point of the free college education argument in this country is to have more people be able to go to college…not to exclude people.
When I read the European model brought it the argument, it weakens the argument against free college for all because nobody proposing the free college education for all is talking about testing.
Free college education for ALL kind of excludes testing as a requirement.
Is there an argument being made for free education for ALL…except for you poor testers? Poor testers…not so fast. You are not allowed in the line for a free college education.
No. That’s a strawman argument…and if there is one thing this country needs…it is more strawman arguments. 
“The whole point of the free college education argument in this country is to have more people be able to go to college” or perhaps to reduce the debt of attendees, since so many already are attending.
When I said “not political,” I meant there should be no mention of specific candidates or parties. And so far, so good.
If the US followed other countries to give free college to only the “best most academically high-achieving students”, the result would be politically unpalatable because of the racial groups that would benefit:
Consider that in Louisiana, TOPS scholarships go disproportionately to white, comparatively higher income students. Nationally, National Merit Finalists are hugely disproportionately asian.
Originally, the reason for implementing Gen Eds in the US colonies/US higher education was because college prep education was so hit-or-miss or unavailable that what was originally considered something to be covered before college ended up being part of the early stages of one’s undergrad education. In the UK and many other countries, gen-eds are something which were supposed to have been offered and completed by one’s college prep high school at the very latest.
That’s largely due to a combination of past historical factors of slavery and racial discrimination combined with the fact our education system’s curricula is so decentralized, often focused on the academically LCD, and dependent on local property taxes.
Result…public and private K-12 systems with an exceedingly wide variation in academic rigor/quality whereas in most other countries which much more centralized education systems and funding systems, the variation between K-12 systems is far less/practically non-existent.
One pediatrician I had who was educated in a central European country stated in a discussion on this topic that in his home country, funding and educational standards were set such that an “A” from a rural college-prep high school in the sticks was equal to an “A” from a college-prep high school in his home country’s capital city. Quite in contrast to how even in my home city of NY…an A from one high school is likely to be a C, D, or even F in another.
And from my cousins observation of the public and local private K-12 schools in their area of Mississippi would make a mediocre NYC public high school curriculum look academically elite in comparison.
And this isn’t a recent phenomenon. Back in the 19th century, concerns over raising academic admission standards to reduce the problem of flunkouts/disciplinary problems being “too elitist” combined with the uneven distribution of adequate college-prep education even among the upper/upper-middle classes…such as scions of plantation owners meant the “most PC” solution briefly implemented ~ a decade before the Civil War was to make West Point a 5-year program so there’s an extra year allowed to provide remedial education/gen-eds for incoming cadets whose prior education was considered deficient by the admissions/academic board. West Point’s brief 5-year program experiment ended right before the first guns of the Civil War were fired in anger.