Alex Adrianson explores in a Heritage Foundation “Insider Online” entry the likely negative consequences associated with President Obama’s plan to offer “free” community college tuition.

On Thursday, President Obama proposed making two years of community college free for all students maintaining a C average. The cost of the schooling would be paid by federal and state taxpayers. And on Friday, the White House said the plan would cost $60 billion over 10 years.

Plowing that money into community colleges isn’t likely to be a good investment, explains Neal McCluskey:

The federal Digest of Education Statistics reports that a mere 19.5 percent of first-time, full-time community college students complete their programs within 150 percent of the time they are supposed to take. So less than 20 percent finish a two-year degree within three years, or a 10-month certificate program within 15 months. And that rate has been dropping almost every year since the cohort of students that started in 2000, which saw 23.6 percent complete. Moreover, as I itemize in a post at SeeThruEDU.com, even when you add transfers to four-year schools, the numbers don’t improve very much. Meanwhile, interestingly, the for-profit sector that has been so heavily demonized by the administration has an almost 63 percent completion rate at two-year institutions, and that has been rising steadily since the 2000 cohort.

The other huge problem is that the large majority of job categories expected to grow the most in the coming years do not require postsecondary training. Of the 30 occupations that the U.S. Department of Labor projects to see the greatest total growth by 2022, only 10 typically need some sort of postsecondary education, and several of those require less than an associate’s degree. Most of the new jobs will require a high school diploma or less. [Cato Institute, January 9]

Among other problems, the requirement to maintain a C average isn’t going to help achievement in high school, notes Lindsey Burke:

More than one-third of students have to take remedial courses when they enter college, as they leave high school unprepared for university-level work. Free community college would put even less pressure on high schools to produce graduates who are prepared for college-level work, as they could expect the new free community colleges to fill in what the high schools are failing to do. The proposal is more likely to produce a six-year high school system than a two-year gratis workforce preparation experience.