Nothing is free. Should funds be dumped into an industry that has increased prices at triple the rate of all other industries? Better to ask why have costs gone up so much. US colleges that don’t accept Federal loans have tuition roughly half of their similarly-ranked peers. Throwing scarce resources into an industry that has a recent history of producing a lower quality product at much higher cost is a bad idea.

It is a discussion we have had before. As khalling noted here, although many libertarians including Ayn Rand suggested lotteries as a non-coercive way to raise state revenues, the fact remains that it puts them in the gambling business - which they regulate and suppress. Not just anyone can run their own lotteries.

Also, as pointed out here by FreedomForAll, governments just waste what moneys (and resources) they do have. That is a deeper issue. Governments do not make ECONOMIC decisions; they make POLITICAL decisions, which of necessity are malinvestments.

(On the side issue of law and law enforcement, we make the one exception for the one task for which the government does have a moral mandate.)

The explosion in government funding of education has not raised the salaries of professors or created more jobs for them; we do not have more and better college libraries, certainly. It is the ADMINISTRATIONS that have benefited... no surprise there...

What is so wrong about having to pay for your own education to begin with? Isn't it a value for value exchange?

The last statistics I checked had 21% of people completing college. What about the other 79%? Not everyone is created equally mentally; not everyone is suited for college. My plumber didn't go to college and he makes good money. He learned his skills through an apprenticeship and much of Europe uses a similar model: apprenticeships for students who don't have the skills to complete college. (You can challenge your placement.)

Using the gambling habits of the ignorant masses to fund additional educationgreat... how far does 2 years of community college ge tyou these days?

As far as your legislating morality comment.... every law and regulation is an expression of morality

What if all those college students learn proper mathematics, including probability and statistics? The Lottery is a tax on bad mathematics. Will the cat be out of the bag?

No worry. For every student who learns that the only way to win the Lottery is not to play, there will still be a thousand others willing to pay $1000 to win $600. In my state it takes a lot of extra time to pay for gas when someone in front of me is busy deciding which lottery ticket to buy. There must be two dozen different choices.

The government has dreamed up a way to extract more money from its citizens to fund an activity in which it has no business being involved. Will someone on Galt's Gulch, of all places, give me a logical explanation of why government should be providing education, for free or not?

What came first, poor student outcomes or government funding for education?

Anything free is worth what you paid for it.

(Disclaimer: I hold both an undergraduate degree as well as an MBA from a respected University.)

I think there is a deeper question that needs to be addressed to ALL in higher education:

Why has society deemed it necessary to get a four-year degree in order to be successful in today's world?

It seems to me to be more a barrier to entry to the middle class than a legitimately valuable tool. There are a huge number of jobs out there - especially in trades, auto repair, and construction - where an apprenticeship is vastly superior practical education in comparison to a four-year institution. I question the need for every high school graduate to obtain a four-year degree. How much true value is being derived from the system for the student?

Now one can quickly point out (and not without justification) that our primary educations have dropped in efficacy to the point that many high school graduates are barely passing. What is the point of sending students like that to college at all?

I had a friend who was from Germany and we discussed the disparity in the education systems. There, "high school" was over by age 16 and students would either move to a trade school for specific training or move on to university for extensive education in engineering, law, etc. At the time, I dismissed the system out of my own ignorance, but looking at it now, I wonder if there isn't some merit there. The only students even considered for "university" are the top students: B+ average or better. That being said, noone pays for their own education either, however.

I guess I look back at the late 1800's/early 1900's and the education systems in place then: they were run locally, age did not necessarily determine grade level, and results were everything. Teachers were paid by students' parents in most cases and held accountable to them. University was a major accomplishment and reserved only for those with needs for higher education pursuits. Training in trades was the prevalent form of job-related education.

I compare that to the modern era where K-6 is barely more than organized daycare and indoctrination and 7-12 isn't much better. Higher education is grossly expensive due to both subsidies and too much demand and has diverged from being learning-centered to being entertainment/sport-centered.

Does my MBA look impressive on my resume? Yup. Have I actually used it much in my position in IT? Eh. Most of the stuff covered in class specifically related to IT was either stuff I already knew (and the teachers knew it) or stuff that was outdated. To me, an IT trade school makes a lot of sense.

My brother also recently graduated with a degree in psychology - but works as a warehouse tech. Without a doctorate, about the closest employment in his field is that of a social worker - a thankless job that makes less than he makes now but without the fun of driving a forklift (his words)!

So I have to question the efficacy and value of the whole higher education system. To me, there is a glut of educated fools with degrees that mean nothing. I can't really celebrate "job requirement inflation"! (yes, please help me come up with a better term)

as long as nobody is forced to buy lottery tickets, I have no problem with this.

OK used the exact same argument when they adopted the lottery scheme just a few years ago, only for K-12.
Year before last our local school received the grand allocation of $700. Where do you suppose the rest went?

Yeah the biggest flaw is government makes the promise today, and they'll never cancel the program. When the lottery runs out of money people won't accept cutting this program.

"10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc" Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto.

Both parties have been taken over by the socialists..

All this will do is create more career students at the cost to the tax payer. If they want to do this, then it should be such that IF you graduate with a useful degree, then maybe the state pays the cost.

There's a lot we don't know about this that would really be required in order to make a reasoned response.

How many students do you have that graduate from high school who cannot go to college today?
What is your high school dropout rate?
What about students who transfer into Tenn from other states?

If a majority of your students manage to go to college without your assistance, I'd say you just don't need to go there. Also if your high-school dropout rate is higher than the national average, I'd say you need to spend money getting kids to reach for THT golden ring. Treating students from your state in one way - by giving them a free education, yet treating transfer students as second class by charging them much more will cost you state more than just money, brain power will stay away.

Taken to its logical conclusion, all states with a surplus in their lottery fund could do the same as Tennessee. What an original idea. Use surplus money to fund something useful, like education. Wow who would have thoughtt!