Obama's Free Community College Proposal Is Ridiculous

As someone who has spent over 15 years teaching at community colleges, I cannot think of a worse idea than President Obama’s proposal for the federal government to provide “free” community college tuition nationwide.  Here’s why:

Nothing in life is “free”: The lesson we should be teaching our students is that nothing of value is free.  “Free community college” for students translates into “a tax increase for somebody else.”  Who is going to pay for the billions of dollars it will cost to provide “free” tuition at community colleges, which are heavily subsidized by taxpayers already?  College should be affordable, but students need to responsibly shoulder most of the cost.

The federal government has no business in education: Article 1, Sec. 8 of the Constitution enumerates the powers of the federal government. Education is not one of them.  The 10^th Amendment stipulates that all powers not granted to the federal government belong to the states – and this includes education from kindergarten through graduate school.  States are perfectly capable of maintaining community colleges without interference from federal bureaucrats in Washington, D.C., and all the strings they will invariably attach to the “free” program.

You get what you pay for: If community college becomes “free,” it will attract even more unserious students than the ones already enrolled in community colleges.  Anecdotally, I’d say that about half the students in community colleges are not ready for college-level work.  (I worked at one community college in which the department that offered the most course sections of any department on campus was the remedial education department.)  Many students enroll in community colleges simply because they were handed a high-school diploma based on grade inflation and social promotion and have no clue what to do next.  Fall semesters tend to produce the worst students; many simply disappear without a trace after a few weeks.  Those who hang around until the spring semester are usually more serious.  It’s also true that some community college students “game” the financial aid system; they attend long enough to get their checks, then vamoose.
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