What's wrong with tuition-free college?

[frazzled]

48. I think it's just Champagne-Urbana

the main campus, but other of the regional campuses may have other programs. And I think the cheating thing has been addressed, once it was revealed.

But I take some exception to your suggestion that students from less wealthy backgrounds cannot meet the admission requirements. I may be taking it wrong, but it sounds like you might be referring to minority students. And I don't accept that poor or minority students are not capable of being high achievers.

It's true that middle and high schools in some minority neighborhoods don't offer the kind of educational instruction that kids need to be able to attend first-rate colleges and universities. But that is a whole different issue: we desperately need to improve our elementary and secondary schools. I remember years ago when my son was a student at the University of Chicago and signed onto a summer program to assist middle-school students in math. He and a fellow student worked with an 8th-grade kid from one of the worst middle schools in the city. But he said this kid was "absolutely brilliant": it was just that his school didn't offer any of the math that would be needed for an advanced high-school program. So they spent the summer getting him up to speed; and it worked. He would be attending a very good high school the following year. I hope he would be the kind of kid who would qualify for the free tuition.

Students without such bright futures can access the free tuition at community colleges, and hopefully get the credentials they need to transfer to another school to complete a full undergraduate degree.

But get this straight: none of the policies proposed by any of the candidates would help underserved kids to get into the best state schools. You still have to meet the entrance requirement at a given school, and not everyone will do that, by far. The REAL issue to me is improving El-Hi education in this country. Every kid has the ability to achieve, but not all of them are getting the educational start they need. And it can't be made-up for completely in the post-high-school environment.