[salesguy222]

Nothing is free in life except sunlight.

Colleges employ people and build buildings and have ongoing costs. Taxpayer money would need to be used to pay for this, and that money must have continued value, otherwise no amount of money would actually get the job done (see Venezuela)

Not everyone learns valuable skills at college. You have to watch out for conflating "learning valuable skills" with "occupying space on a college campus."

[Clubber]

That's not true. If it nets a return greater than the costs, then the costs don't "cost" anything.

Think of it this way: do you think having a large college educated population is a net good or a net bad for the US?

[dontJudge]

Net bad. Too many degrees reduce their value in the market with poor job prospects. The extra years of education does not create an enlightened utopia.

[salesguy222]

It would be a net good if the people who went to college were changed in such a way that they stopped destroying value and started creating value.

That is to say, if college (more often than not) turned criminals into saints, and turned a welfare recipient into Erdos, then it would be an excellent investment for society.

But there's no evidence it does this, and it doesn't even do a better job than high school. You can learn more on youtube than you do in college.

So until then, it's a marketing racket that transfers state money into a few private hands- and the gov't goes around collecting for decades.

[staticelf]

It is free for the student just as it's free for you to drive your car on the public roads to work.

[salesguy222]

There is still a price collected. The question is- "is this price worth the value delivered?"

In the case of roads, the answer is usually yes. The value they add is clear (at least until flying everywhereis the new economic norm).

People are willing to pay local taxes, tolls, insurance, licensing fees, gas taxes. A good portion of this money goes to road building and upkeep. Some of it is syphoned off and goes to other things.

If the proportion falls out of balance, and in parts of this country it does, then it no longer becomes "worth it", because of corruption and misuse.

If you've ever drive i95 from the Bronx to Stamford CT, you'll notice the portion in NY is in absolute disrepair, but the CT portion is very nicely paved. And yet, both states are flush with money. So what gives?? Mismanagement of public funds is the cause.

Similarly, if college (a 4 year holding tank after high school) is so much better than secondary education, vocational education, and self-teaching through books and youtube, then we can continue investing in it.

But since it isn't clear that college is better than these cheaper alternatives, it's just a way for public money to be siphoned from your wallet to someone else's.

It most definitely isn't free, unless you avoid the variety of taxes in our society. In which case, I applaud you for living a non-traditional and very self-sufficient life :)