Plan to foot the bill for the mediocre and indifferent, discourages those who sacrificed to pay for college.

"Free is a very special price," observes Dan Ariely, the Duke University economist noted for his experiments exposing the irrationality of consumer behavior.
In one of those experiments, Ariely invited test subjects to choose between two pieces of chocolate candy in a number of different price scenerios. When offered a Hershey's Kiss that costs a penny or a larger, richer chocolate truffle priced at 25 cents, Ariely found, most subjects chose the pricier truffle.
But when Ariely reduced the price of both options by by one cent, the results were flipped; a majority of consumers were unable to resist the free, albeit less satisfying, Hershey's Kiss.
It is easy to make too much of insights gleaned in such a specific experimental setting. But surely Ariely's free candy scenario is not the first in which the prospect of getting something for nothing has distorted the value we place on whatever a would-be benefactor happens to be handing out.
So all our antennae ought to go up when we hear the presumptive Democratic nominee for president echoing her vanquished primary rival's call for a federal program that would offer free college tuition to the 80% of students whose families earn $125,000 a year or less.
Stealing the Bern
Hillary Clinton had already proposed a 10-year, $350-billion initiative aimed at helping lower- and middle-class students complete their degrees without incurring crushing debts. The more ambitious plan she embraced last week is closer to Sen. Bernie Sanders' proposal to eliminate tuition at public colleges altogether, an idea his campaign estimates would cost the federal government $750 billion in its first decade.
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Like Sanders' proposal for tuition-free college, Clinton's expanded plan would encourage state participation (or coerce it, depending on one's perspective) ) by providing tuition grants only to students whose states pledge their own financial support. Advocates said the federal-state matching concept could reverse a trend of diminishing state support for higher education. But skeptics — including, as recently as a few months ago, Clinton herself — have expressed concern that balky red state governors could undermine the plan by opting out, just as they have refused to participate in the expanded Medicaid program that is a pillar of Obamacare.
Clinton is realistic enough to realize that no Congress seated before the next reapportionment in 2021 is likely to support such a dramatic expansion of tuition assistance. So, many will be tempted to dismiss her proposal as a cynical — and ultimately meaningless — concession to Sanders' youthful constituency, whose support she wants to nail down in advance of this month's Democratic nominating convention.
But one of the hazards of running for president is the risk that a significant number of voters will take even your most Utopian ideas seriously. So before we dismiss it as unaffordable (because so, after all, are the tens of billions of taxpayer dollars allocated to incarcerate those we feel too strapped to educate), let's consider whether "free tuition" would be bargain at any price.
A right redeemed by rigor
I'll begin by casting my lot with those who believe that, in a civilized democracy, the cost of tuition should not be a barrier to anyone with the desire and aptitude to obtain a degree. The prosperity-multiplying impact of enabling citizens to advance as far as their intellect and energy will sustain them is manifest in our own country as well as those of our global trading partners and competitors.
But that does not make a college degree a human right tantamount to medical care. For one thing, it isn't a service that can be provided to an unconscious recipient. You can give an ailing patient a new kidney or a new knee, but teaching a student who makes no real effort to absorb the lesson at hand is pointless.
Those with the strongest claim to significant tuition assistance are students who have persevered to complete a degree that will pave the way for employment, more advanced training or both. Indifferent students should not be rewarded for filling their classroom seats anymore than children should be encouraged to fill their plates with food they do not care to eat.
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There is also the matter of fairness to those who have had the bad luck to complete degrees in an era of diminishing public support for higher education. Clinton has long proposed a three-month moratorium on student loan payments that would give those staggered by such debt an opportunity to reorganize and reduce their liabilities. But extending dramatically more generous terms to the next generation of college students is guaranteed to trigger the righteous resentment of predecessors who made, and continue to make, real financial sacrifices to secure their own degrees.
Neither of these reservations is meant to disparage the merit in removing as many obstacles as possible from the paths of those willing to invest in the hard work of higher learning. Turning willing students away costs everyone money, diminishes our capacity for self-government and exacerbates the economic and political polarization that threatens our way of life.
But we should be wary of schemes that seek to enhance our educational capital by giving it away. Inefficiency is no more virtuous in the name of higher education than in the realms of national defense or public safety.
By the time they reach a certain age, most voters understand that "free" is an illusion that can be sustained only by those with blinkered vision. In the grand scheme of things, even the healthiest lunch has its price. The question is always who pays how much, and what they should reasonably expect for their money.
Brian Dickerson is a columnist for The Detroit Free Press where this column first appeared. Follow Brian Dickerson on Twitter: @BRIANDDICKERSON