Free College Is a Subsidy in Search of a Problem
Zero tuition taxes the plumber to underwrite the consultant, hides costs instead of cutting them, and crowds out the vocational paths the economy is starving for.
Free is a price, not a cost. Making public college tuition-free does not make professors, buildings, or administrations cheaper; it moves the bill from the student who captures the degree's premium to taxpayers who never will. The distributional math is uncomfortable for the policy's champions: college graduates out-earn non-graduates over a lifetime, so universal free tuition is a transfer toward the eventually affluent, financed in part by the wages of people who chose work instead.
The deeper problem is what zero-price does to the institutions. Tuition, whatever its pathologies, is a signal that forces some discipline on cost and some accountability to students. Remove it and the incentives run one direction: administrative growth, credential inflation, and enrollment as a budget line rather than a fit. The countries that offer free university typically ration it hard through tracking and examinations, a trade the American version of this promise never mentions.
If the goal is opportunity, aim at it. Fund apprenticeships and technical certifications the economy is actually short of; make aid generous and targeted at students for whom cost is the real barrier; let institutions compete on price instead of amenities. Those policies help the marginal student. Free college mostly helps the destination.