I note I am not for free education. Education brings benefits, including a generally better station in life and more money. It ought not be free, because that punishes those who do not have an education. I am not for any member of society getting government freebies, and education is valuable. If education is free, do not complain that the indigent or uneducated are given a free ride.
However, in addressing how to deal with the rampant costs of education in the US, I am at a loss. I know that Centre college (
www.centre.edu) used its $100 million endowment to give every student a $5,000/yr break on tuition. However, this still left tuition + room/board at $15,000 or more for everyone. The problem is that US colleges, even with the high tuition, do not make a lot of profit. It takes a lot of money to give students a 15/1 faculty/student ratio (with 97% of faculty being Ph.D.). If we force tuition prices down via law, we will simply bankrupt colleges. Like medicine, it's a tricky problem to address. The only remedy to keep colleges/hospitals from going bankrupt is to also legislate that professor/doctor salaries be lowered. If education were free, that may be plausible, since most doctors (for instance) justify their $300,000/yr incomes based on their astronomical student loan debts (and the years of residency they must serve being basically indentured servants at a meagre pay). It's very complex, and perhaps not the topic of this thread. It is an issue I have ideas about, but only half-formed ideas.