for free or with huge subsidies have found to their dismay that tuition is the tip of the iceberg. Having taught at FSU for nearly a decade, I witnessed myself the changes that Bright Future scholarships made on the university system. First, at least Florida was wise enough to only give the scholarships to those students who were in the upper percentile of their graduating classes, and had minimum GPAs. And the amount you get in funding depends on those two criteria. All good right?

Not really. First, even with high standards, you are using a lottery that is primarily funded by the poor to finance the educations of kids who come from above median income families. Do many poor kids get funded? Definitely. But not nearly at the rates you are funding wealthier children. Next, after guaranteeing spots to nearly a third of graduating seniors each year, where do you actually put them? U.F. and FSU filled up with all the best students very quickly. The last year I taught at FSU, I asked my class how many of them came from outside of Florida. Only five of the 60 students raised their hand. Three of the others were from southern Georgia, one was from Texas and on athletic scholarship, and the other from the Dominican Republic on scholarship. So I asked how many were paying at least half of their tuition themselves and not one hand went up. Every student was on some form of scholarship. In a way, it was great that we had much better students when I left than when I began, because FSU was preferred to the other state schools. On the other hand, the work ethic was pathetic. They were there to party and watch sports.

But here is the bigger problem. After FSU and UF, where did the others go? Because tuition only pays minority of the costs of running a university, the state was on the hook for the spending necessary to provide the infrastructure at other campuses. USF and Central Florida have exploded in the last decade, and you have also had huge expansions of Western Florida and Northern Florida. This has not been cheap. Unfortunately, these schools have also had an increase in the cost of conducting remedial classes for many of the students who have scholarships, but not really the skills necessary to be successful at that point. Couple that with the guarantee community college students get that they will be able to transfer to a state school after completion of their associates, and there is a huge expense in remediation and retention efforts.

So while I am very sympathetic to the idea that everyone should educated, I know that economically, the return you get from educating marginal ability people is non-existent. Some people can be educated easily and cheaply, and then use that education to generate more value for society. Some people will cost more to educate due to low ability, low effort, or no desire to move to a location where that degree will have value to society. As individual have the best knowledge of whether they fit in one of those three categories, let them bear the cost and force them to decide whether it is worth the marginal benefit.