Tuition Free High Education in US

I look forward to an entertaining and enlightening debate! To begin, I would like to address the absurd claim that subsidizing higher education (which is what such a program as tuition-free higher education would obviously be) would stimulate the currently dire United States economy. Education costs money; this is obvious both to myself and my opponent. The question becomes, all merits aside, who is going to foot the bill? The answer is taxpayers. The government would, by subsidizing higher education, overnight add billions to it's already bloated and unbalanced budget, sending us even further into national debt. It then comes down to three options; either the government raises taxes now to make up for the shortfall in the short term, which would further cripple our economy, or it expands the deficit and must repay the debt with interest later on down the road, and thus raises taxes in the future to ridiculously high levels to pay down this now massive debt. Either way, you cannot defer the immense cost of such a program forever. The chickens will come home to roost, so to speak, and will devastate taxpayers' pockets. The third option is even riskier, and it's outcome more certain. The government could just print the needed dollars (or, create them electronically), and use this new "free" money to foot the bill. This route would be even more devastating; the already devalued and inflated dollar would become a worthless currency. The point being, despite any merits my opponent may show subsidized higher education to have, the cost is prohibitive, and thus the program should not be undertaken. Next, I would like to demonstrate that such a program has no Constitutional support, and thus must be rejected on purely Constitutional grounds. Nowhere in the Constitution is there an allowance made for the federal government to interfere in higher education. The Constitution is not a document that spells out the few things the government is forbidden to do; it is a document that spells out the few things that the government CAN do, and denies it all others. Education, let alone higher education, is nowhere provided for in the Constitution. If my opponent wishes to amend the Constitution to allow for this kind of program, or if my opponent wishes to ignore the Constitution (as is becoming the norm), please let him do so in his next speech. Otherwise, this program is invalid because of unconstitutionality alone. Now I will show that subsidization will likely destroy the value of higher education. The federal government has made a track record of failure for itself. For evidence, I ask you the following: which are you more satisfied with, your (privately owned) local box office, or your local DMV? From FEMA to the Wars on Drugs and Poverty, the government doesn't seem to do anything right, let alone efficiently. Our government and it's programs are unnecessarily bureaucratic, which makes them needlessly expensive. Subjecting schools to further federal interference subjects them also to the litany of federal rules, regulations, and flaming hoops to jump through. The beauty of our higher education as is (especially private schools) is it's amazing variety; federalizing almost always leads to standardizing, which would destroy this variety, which currently allows students to pick precisely the institute that fits them. Furthermore, even now private schools far outstrip public schools in almost all areas, except perhaps athletics. Private institutions have a strong incentive to be better, and competition has honed such schools as Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Princeton, and the rest to be outstanding, while (insert state name here) State Universitys across the country flounder and become much less prestigious. To address the issue of students being unable to afford higher education, I would like to submit the following. Private academic scholarships are currently available in significant quantities; any student that wishes to can work hard, achieve good grades in high school, and be granted enough scholarships to mostly or completely pay for their education. Is it unfortunate when somebody is denied higher education due to finances? Absolutely. But the fact of the matter is that the costs of education, coupled with academic scholarships, makes higher education a prize to be coveted, which has two benefits. The first is that such a system virtually ensures that the most qualified applicants are able to attend, thus helping to alleviate the problems of poorly allocated resources (which is how we must look at the dollars involved). Spending thousands of dollars to help a mediocre student get a degree, when that money could have been used to further the education of an outstanding student, is indeed a misallocation, no matter how you look at it. The second is that it makes higher education a privilege, which tends to make those who achieve it take it more seriously. One need only look at the overwhelmingly poor state of some of our high schools (especially in urban areas) to realize how treating education as a right, rather than a privilege, diminishes it's quality.