With open-admission policies and reasonable costs community colleges provide access to post-secondary education to a wide range of students who are typically underserved.

Here are two of the major benefits of community college:

1)With careful planning it is possible to trim $30,000 off the cost of a traditional four-year degree at a state university by enrolling in a community college for two years and transferring credits. (About twenty percent of students transfer to a traditional four-year institution. Their graduation rate there is good—about sixty-two percent. If we assume their job placement rate is the same as students who choose to initially enroll in the traditional four-year school, the overall chances of success (landing a good job) for this strategy, is about six percent. It is very important to analyze how the credits will be transferred when choosing a community college. A significant number of students lose substantial credits due to lack of planning.)

2)If you choose the right community college and the right major, it is possible to gain the skills to qualify for a “breadwinner”—$50,000 a year—job for less than $20,000 in two years or less.

How could making community college free possibly be a bad idea?

First, President Obama’s basic premise is flawed. “A college degree is the surest ticket to the middle class,” is no longer true. Today there is a significant imbalance between supply and demand. Over two million high school graduates (seventy percent) enroll in college every year. According to the Labor Department only a few hundred thousand new college graduates are able to get good jobs each year. (The Great Recession of 2008 sapped the job market of the types of jobs suitable for college grads, and, while the job market is slowly coming back, there is still a huge shortfall. College students are in a fierce competition for a few jobs, and most of them are unaware of the contest.)

In addition, there is a mismatch of skills demanded in the workplace and skills gained. Many job openings go wanting—Silicon Valley for an example—while the schools keep churning out attorneys, archaeologists, and art history majors. About half of all college graduates end up underemployed or unemployed.

Making community college free and increasing the number of enrollees is not going to solve those two problems.

Parents and educators are wedded to an outdated vision of how post-secondary education works which has resulted in a lemming-like march to the institutions of higher learning. Shockingly, when the facts are laid bare, today the majority of students enrolling in college, both community college and the traditional four-year college, are just wasting their time and money.

And there are three more arguments against making community college free:

1)The track record of community colleges is not very good. Using the federal accountability measure, only twenty-two percent of students gain a credential. (This is probably due to the lack of selectivity. More than two-thirds of enrollees require remedial courses.) And, community colleges vary widely with regard to the quality of education.

2)Community college is already free—at least to those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder. Those students qualify for Pell Grants which cover community college’s very reasonable tuition costs.

3)Lastly, given human nature, no one places much value on “free.” Students with no “skin in the game” are less likely to apply themselves academically.

A better solution than free community college is a return to providing vocational training. There are plenty of good, high paying jobs available. But this will require a reapportioning of resources, and, most importantly, elimination of the stigma that these jobs carry in our society.

Mike Rowe, host of The Discovery Channel’s “Dirty Jobs”, is a big advocate: “For decades, parents and teachers have affirmatively discouraged kids from pursuing careers in the trades. The push for a degree has been relentless, and now, the consequences are undeniable. Vocational education is gone from high schools, a trillion dollars in college loans is on the books, unemployment is still God-awful, and we have a widening skills gap.”

Instead of “doubling down” on an old idea perhaps US policy makers should be looking for new ideas for syncing up post-secondary education with the new job market. The Federal Institute for Vocational Training and Education in Germany and the “studio” schools in the United Kingdom would be good places to start.

If you decide to enroll in community college, recognize that you are entering a competition and that competition includes those students who enrolled in the traditional four-year schools–there are only so many good jobs. If you were a mediocre or less than enthusiastic student in high school, maybe community college is a bad choice for you. There are plenty of other avenues that can result in your getting a well-paying job and becoming financially self-sufficient. While your friends are paying off their student loans you can take your spouse and kids to Disneyland.