Should There Be Free College In The United States?

First of all, it is important to correct the common misconception: public-funded college and free college are different things. Free college can only be maintained by private charity organizations; public-funded college is not free and it is paid by the same people who pay for the private-funded education, the only difference being that their money is not spent on their education, but, instead, put in the centralized pool of education funds, that are then spent on different people in different proportions based on the preferences of the current government.

This consideration leads to the reformulation of the question: should I be forced to pay for everyone's education, or should I be able to decide what to spend my money on? Coming from the position of the individual freedom, the answer is obvious: the latter should be the case. My money is my property, and nobody can use that property but me without my consent.

When I pay taxes every month, I want those taxes to be spent on serving my interests. My interests include many things, namely modern public infrastructure - but they do not include my neighbors' kids being able to study at a college no matter their income. Hence, no, I do not think there should be public-funded higher education (or any education, for that matter) in the US: this is not what I work hard for every month, this is not something I want my resources invested into.

This is not even considering the fact that pretty much all ratings of top universities are dominated by private universities, with typically a half of all the positions being taken by the American universities. The vast majority of citations in scientific literature belong to the papers authored by American scientists. Clearly the current higher education system in the US is disproportionally the best in the world. Certain public education systems, such as the Swiss and the UK one, are pretty competitive, but not quite there, and still require heavy taxation to sustain - which, again, is not something many people are happy with. 

To summarize: I think that public-funded higher education in the US would be both morally wrong, and economically counter-productive. Potential higher enrollment numbers would easily be offset by the loss of real net income and drop in instructor qualifications. The current US college system is the best one in the world, and if anything is to be changed, it has to be the public fraction of the endowment - removed and substituted by heavier private funding. The increasing education costs are not an issue in the conditions of simultaneously booming banking sector; the real issue is the governmental involvement making the returns from gaining higher education much lower than it could be in the absence of one to many domestic students. 

Yes, I am in favour of free collages to get rid of education loans. I know a number of students who struggle due to high fees of colleges. However, in the case of free collages, the quality of education shouldn't be compromised.