If you saddle people with debt that can't be discharged, they're less able to take risks that may end up producing major benefits for society. Instead, they're driven to compete for safe positions that have a smaller potential upside. This results in less innovation, and it also depresses wages for people in the safe positions. Besides making the lives of people who are already low on the totem pole worse, this depression of wages for safe jobs can ultimately lead to a greater reliance on government assistance. The only winner is large established corporations who profit from cheap labor and fear disruptive innovation.

> If you aren't willing to invest in yourself, why should society do so?

Because society has an interest in a large, well-educated labour pool that its entrepreneurs and companies can draw from. They can then employ these people, and pay them high salaries, a part of which goes back to education, and there you have a positive spiral.

With rising level of joblessness across the world, I am not too sure societies are having difficulty in having large well educated labour pool.

Doesn't that argument extend to mean that the public shouldn't fund any education? I mean what's the difference between the first ~12 years of school vs the last 2-5? Is the difference that the people are adults and no longer children (and so can be said to be responsible for themselves)?

First, there must be a dividing line between when we are no longer going to pay for a persons education. 18 years old is a pretty good dividing line because that when society deems people responsible for themselves.

Second, college is a good cut of because it's highly specialized education.

Third, almost all the benefits are captured by the precipitant of the education.

Finally, most of the country would either be unsuited or uninterested in college education. To a person breaking their back doing roofting, they might as well be buying rich kids trips to Europe instead. Not only does free college only benefit a portion of society, it benefits a portion that doesn't need a subsidy.

The point of subsidizing college is to give the person who might otherwise become a roofer the option of a more pleasant, lucrative career.

Scientific and technical knowledge drives innovation. Economic growth on a per-capita basis is entirely driven by innovation. Thus scientific and technical education directly impacts your quality of life.

With regards to liberal arts education, I'm inclined to agree that government subsidies may not be the best use of tax money.

> With regards to liberal arts education, I'm inclined to agree that government subsidies may not be the best use of tax money.

Who do you think will start going to college more once it's free? Students who are driven to get a STEM career are already pursuing college. Making it free will attract the people who think along the lines of "I don't wanna start working yet, might as well go live the college lifestyle for free and get a sociology degree before I end up as a barista anyway." (I'm exaggerating slightly but you get the idea).

The key value of making STEM degrees free isn't that it will cause a massive increase in the number of people who get them. I suspect that the increase would be rather modest. Instead, it is to free people who pursue STEM degrees from the burden of debt, so they're more able to take the kinds of risks that can result in big wins for society. Innovation is an inherently risky pursuit, and if we make potential innovators risk-averse through debt we're wasting much of the value of their education.

To be fair, I'm not totally against (at least partially) funding certain liberal arts degrees either. Specifically, creative writing and journalism are both valuable. For example, it would be profitable to subsidize many thousands of creative writing students to produce more popular writers like J.K. Rowling or Stephen King. Total yearly sales of fiction books in the US is ~14 billion, taxes from that could cover subsidies for creative writing if they were merit based.

The first 12 years is general knowledge: how to interact, read, write, basic knowledge, etc. Also has the purpose of acting as a binding agent for the local community: children make friends, join teams/clubs, etc.

College / university is specialized knowledge that is typically used for career and social status advancement. Its helpful and has utility, but it's not necessarily required to be a functioning adult that lives in and contributes to society

It is free, for the student. If I had to pay for college I couldn't afford it. That doesn't mean I am not willing to invest in myself.