TIL free college used to be relatively common in the US

 So...I've researching free college for my book, and this revelation is important enough to mention in my blog. I'm not under the impression the US ever had a truly widespread system of free college, but various states implemented it for a while. California was a big one. State college was tuition free until the 1960s when Ronald Reagan repealed it. Why did this happen? Well, there were a few reasons that all seem to come together within the zeitgeist of the 1960s:

 1) Increases in enrollment arguably made it "too expensive." I put this in quotes because while I do admit that more students means higher costs, conservatives like Reagan love to claim things are "too expensive" in order to push for lower costs.

 2) Dog whistle politics. There was arguably a racial component to the above. What drove the increase in enrollment was, in part, the fact that states could no longer discriminate against black people, and the right clearly didn't want black people to be educated.

 3) Protest culture and anti protest culture. It was the 1960s, a lot of people who went to college were protesting for civil rights, against the Vietnam war, and you know the right and protests, they HATE them. So they were like, "ya know, if we make these protesters get JOBS instead, they won't be able to protest!" There are even some quotes going around with Reagan and his advisers saying the taking away of free college was to "get rid of undesirables" and stuff like that. We've been seeing a lot of the same pushes against foreign students with the free Palestine stuff under trump. 

 4) Fear of an educated working class. An educated working class is the anathema of the right. Heck, educated people in general are the anathema of the right. This is why they spend so much time trying to corner K-12 education while making college inaccessible.  Educated people, to paraphrase George Carlin, can sit around the kitchen table and understand how badly they're being screwed. And given the anti marxist nature of the government at the time, they were afraid that a generation of highly educated people would create the conditions for revolution. 

5) Resentment politics. These were kinda created after the fact, but they pulled the whole "do you, Joe Workingman want to pay for all these rich kids to go to college?" And Joe workingman is like "I NEVER WENT TO COLLEGE, WHY SHOULD I PAY FOR SOMEONE ELSE TO GO TO COLLEGE! LET THEM FUND THEIR OWN COLLEGE!" 

And thus, the student loan crisis was born. Colleges started charging tuition, the rates went up dramatically, and here we are 60 years later with a student loan crisis. Joy. All because conservatives hate good things. Just wanted to let you guys know that little fact of my research. Im still not under the impression free college was ever truly widespread in the US, like we never had a system of free college where anyone could go. But some progressive states did have it but it was a casualty of the 1960s, the fall of the new deal coalition, and the rise of Reaganism where it existed.