> The message, though, is deafening: You don’t have to pay for college in America. Once we grasp the consequences of “free college for all,” we’ll know the app

> The message, though, is deafening: You don’t have to pay for college in America. Once we grasp the consequences of “free college for all,” we’ll know the approximate effects of a full-fledged student debt jubilee. The most straightforward effect of free college would be a massive increase in college attendance and college completion. A standard estimate is that cutting tuition by $1000 raises college completion by about 2 percentage-points. I disagree with Caplan's interpretation of this message (and I am also against "free college", generally speaking). I don't understand how one would conclude that "hold a debt for decades that you won't have sufficient employment opportunities to pay down, and then it might be forgiven" is a proposition that will increase attendance in college. To me this is a huge red flag to almost never take out a student loan, or do my due diligence very carefully before I do. It appears disingenuous to consider student debt forgiveness to be "trillions in spending" (the government will not spend this money, the colleges have already been paid, they will simply stop removing it from the economy via payments from the debt holders). Surely Caplan, as an economist, knows this. He may think that increase in purchasing power due to the lack of debt payments is akin to new spending, but given 99% of debt holders haven't made a payment in 2 years (and we're, apparently, on the brink of a recession) that doesn't ring true to me.