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Episode 80: You Can’t Make College Free

Everybody vaguely familiar with basic economic concepts knows that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. It’s a great phrase and speaks to the principles of both opportunity cost and scarcity. That said, a “free lunch” refers to more than your afternoon repast. Everything costs something. And if you end up paying zero dollars for it, that only means it was paid for by someone else. This holds true for college tuition. It may cost a student zero dollars, and that student will certainly benefit from not having to pay for higher education herself, but what’s really been done is shifting the…

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