One of the beefs I have with the “free college” movement is that it devalues education.

And in particular, why people should educate themselves.

This is a tough take on life, one with which I myself have struggled: we have value to our fellow humans only as far as they are willing to value us.

No matter how interested one may be in a particular human creation (and note that everything in education is about studying something invented by humans - even science), no one else on the planet may care, or at least care enough to be willing to barter with you something of theirs you may value.

Pretty much all “college should be free” proponents base their belief on economics, primarily personal finance.

I think such an approach is not good for our society as a whole.

It also makes knowledge something about which only money can describe.

Personally, I think education should be curiosity driven, and based on personality traits that are probably programmed into one during the first five or so years of life.

An institute of higher learning such as the traditional university is not the place for many people. It’s not their thing.

Trying to force people into it, or trying to change the concept of a “University” to fit everybody, is not really helping people or the society as a whole.

Now that may sound pretty elitist (and it is kind of elitist), but it is true.

Most (as in 99.999% of) people have no interest in medieval English, for example. It has neither use or interest to them.

And that applies to most subjects at a university (perhaps not to the extreme that medieval English represents.)

As a society, I think it will be a much, much wiser investment to retool our primary education system (e.g., double the teachers so as to halve the class sizes), than to pay for everyone to go to college for four years and study things about which they’re not really invested personally.