In October, President Joe Biden’s proposal to make community college free was cut from the White House’s social spending bill in an effort to get it passed (it remains unpassed as of this writing). This is just the latest push for free private and public college, which began over five decades ago.

It’s easy to see why free higher education is such a popular idea. Free public and private college sounds like a nice solution to prevent millions of students from starting out their post-education lives in debt, doesn’t it?

It sounds good on paper — but it won’t even come close to addressing all the issues surrounding the student loan crisis. Instead, it’s a nice way to add untold billions to the already rapidly increasing U.S. government debt (which as of Nov. 29, is $28.9 trillion).

Roughly 43 million people have student loan debts in the U.S., totaling a grand total of $1.73 trillion owed. Even if the U.S. government managed to magically produce an extra $632 billion in tax revenue each year (the amount degree-granting postsecondary institutions spent from 2018-2019), questions arise that rival the divisiveness of the actual argument for free college: Do people who are currently swimming in their student debt, struggling to pay their loans back, receive a get out of jail free card?

Between 2004 and 2009 alone, the U.S spent over $4 billion on first-year community college dropouts for expenses such as fee waivers. At colleges with open admissions policies, only 34 percent of students are able to complete a bachelor’s degree in six years or less, and in general, 12% of students take 120 months (10 years) or longer to obtain a bachelor’s degree. 

This is unsustainable. If students are wasting money and time just because it’s “free” to do so, a policy mandating the government pay for higher education would likely increase the already-sky-high $562.39 billion a year in debt interest to be paid, further burdening taxpayers.

K-12 education is tuition-free because it is federally mandated. College is not. Annually, governments spend roughly $12,612 per pupil for K-12 education. In comparison, the average cost of attending college tuition is $53,949 per student in the U.S.

One of the arguments for free college tuition — that it would improve completion rates — is flawed. A combination of a lack of funds for high living and tuition costs as well as a lack of preparedness for higher education leads to over 33% of college students dropping out yearly. 

Each year, remedial courses cost students more than $1.3 billion. In multiple 2- and 4-year colleges, nearly 96% of enrolled students required remediation in certain courses, and nearly a third of all college students enroll in extensive remedial courses after being assessed as academically underprepared for college-level work. 

And, disregarding sustainability, if the government were to pour an exorbitant amount of money into free college to solve the tuition problem, it would completely ignore one of the biggest problems low-income students face: high living costs. On average, college students rack up between $11,810 a year on a low budget to $17,620 on a moderate spending plan, which would not be paid for through free tuition. 

The mindset of people pushing for these financially disastrous free college proposals is that if the government is already a few trillion in debt, what’s another few billion? These people are simply ignoring the impossibly high taxes necessary to sustain free college.

Yearly, free K-12 education costs over $762 billion, while Biden’s free community college proposal required an estimated $109 billion. And Biden’s proposal was only for community colleges, so imagine the necessary budget and subsequent tax increase to pay for all colleges. 

It is unfeasible to raise taxes on all 143.3 million taxpayers in the U.S. when states like Alaska have no income or sales tax, leading to over 61% of Americans paying zero federal income tax. While students are currently drowning in their financial worries, it’s unfair to shift this unsustainable burden onto the government and already fed-up taxpayers.

So “why don’t we just use the ginormous $648 billion endowment universities have?” Contrary to popular belief, the endowment, which is money or financial assets that universities receive from donors to fund programs and scholarships, isn’t just a big growing bag of cash for a university’s president to sit on and admire all day.

Endowments allow universities to fund research, provide scholarships and financial aid, pay their professors, operate the university and more. On average, most universities spend around 4-5% of their endowment each year, with Harvard spending roughly 20% of its endowment yearly on financial aid. 

Harvard has nearly 23,000 students and an annual tuition of roughly $78,000. Let’s do the math. 23,000 students times $78,000 times four years to graduate equals $7.1 billion. This number isn’t even accounting for the over $1 billion Harvard spends annually on research, much less the salaries of staff or cost of maintenance.

Even Harvard — the college with the largest endowment in the world — could only stay open for a few years with the government’s support, but this isn’t the norm. The median endowment for universities is $164.6 million. While this may seem like a large sum, it isn’t even enough money to keep the lights on in most universities for a year. 

So, what should we do to encourage more people to graduate from college?.

I actually have a proposal. The U.S. should follow in France’s footsteps and form a new system for college tuition. Instead of making college free, make it more affordable.

When the government plans on making things free, especially college tuition, they generally end up helping people who don’t need help more than those who do. Current free college plans are regressive — students from lower-income families have a lower rate of attending college than students from higher-income families — leading to free college spending disproportionately benefiting students from affluent families. 

To create more tax income to help pay for this education system, instead of raising taxes on people who already sadly bid farewell to nearly a third of their income yearly, the government needs to mandate income, corporate and sales tax percentages in ALL states. 

So, have students pay tuition based on their family income, rather than force them to apply for aid through a strenuous loan process that leaves students still paying for their college tuition years after they graduate. That would help solve the student loan crisis without creating a whole new one.