Free College

Con 1: Tuition-free college is not free, and students would still have large debts.

Tuition is only one expense college students have to pay, accounting for only 30-75 percent of total average college costs. [60]

On average, 2024-2025 in-state tuition at a four-year public college cost $11,610 per year. Fees and room and board for on-campus housing were another $13,310. Books and supplies were another $1,290, transportation another $1,340, and other expenses another $2,360. Without tuition, college still costs an average of $18,300 per year. [66]

Tuition accounts for just under 20 percent of the average community college student’s budget, which runs $20,570 annually on average. [66]

Sweden has free college, and yet students in that country had an average of $21,000 in student debt for living costs and other expenses in 2018 (the most recent comparable data), compared with the $28,400 in debt American college students had the same year. [67]

Con 2: Taxpayers would spend billions to subsidize tuition, while other college costs would remain high.

The estimated cost of Senator Bernie Sanders’ free college program was $47 billion per year, and it had states paying 33 percent of the cost, or $15.5 billion. According to David H. Feldman and Robert B. Archibald, both professors of economics at William & Mary College, the plan would have “require[d] tax increases, or it will force states to move existing resources into higher education and away from other state priorities like health care, prisons, roads and K–12 education.” [50][26]

According to a Campaign for Free College report, states could lose between $77 million (Wyoming) and $5 billion (California) in tuition revenue from their state colleges and universities, and they could pay an additional $15,000 (Wyoming) to $55 million (New York) to subsidize a tuition-free plan. [27]

Neal McCluskey, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, calculated that free college funded by tax dollars would cost every adult taxpayer $1,360 a year, or $77,500 over a lifetime. “Why should people who want to go to college get it paid for in part by people who pursue on-the-job training or other forms of noncollege education?” he asked. “Indeed, why should anyone get a degree to increase their lifetime earnings on the backs of taxpayers?” [28]

College costs have increased for a number of reasons unrelated to tuition, including the financing of fancy dorms, amenities like lazy rivers and climbing walls, student services (such as health care), athletics, increases in administrative personnel, and cuts in state funding. [31][32][33][46]

Con 3: Tuition-free college attracts students who really shouldn’t be in college, wasting public money and decreasing college completion rates.

Jack A. Chambless, an economics professor at Valencia College, has argued that with a free college program, “potentially millions of young people who have no business attending college would waste their time—and taxpayer dollars—seeking degrees they will not obtain.… Free tuition would dupe young people into a sense of belonging, only to find that their work ethic, intelligence and aptitude are not up to the rigors of advanced education.” [34]

As a case in point, under California’s community college fee waiver program, more than 50 percent of the state’s community college students attended for free (before a 2017 program change), but only 6 percent of all California community college students completed a career technical program, and fewer than 10 percent completed a two-year degree in six years. [35]

“Students will enroll at a ‘free college’ and borrow money for the cost of attendance. Then, they will drop out and have a student loan—but no skills. Brilliant,” quipped Vince Norton, managing partner at Norton Norris, a campus marketing company. [36]