The “Free College” Lie Exposed

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The Left loves to promise free college—but the reality tells a different story. In this episode: Why American universities are panicking over fewer kids enrolling
The truth about “free” college in Europe, China, and beyond
Why foreign students aren’t flocking to those supposedly free systems
How U.S. taxpayers already fund massive subsidies that politicians never mention
The free college myth sounds good on paper—but once you follow the money, you’ll see why it’s one of the biggest lies in modern politics.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Small colleges going out of business. Interesting story, and we've
talked a little bit about all of the foreign students
that come here to this country and how they are well.
They're keeping many colleges afloat. Yeah, perfect storm. More colleges
at risk as enrollment falls and financial pressures mount YEP

(00:41):
long building financial crisis may be reaching a breaking point.
Closures and mergers are looming at a pace that we
haven't seen since the Great Recession. Morning lights have been
flashing for years. Fewer high school graduates are enrolling in college,
and the overall population of college AIG students is shrinking.

(01:02):
A demographic cliff again. All things that we told you
were coming now. People are concerned right now. These college
any of these college and universities, are concerned because they
visa issues, not as many kids coming here to go
to school. I actually had these questions asked, you know

(01:25):
about you know, don't these kids don't their colleges and
universities in Europe and China and all these other places.
Why don't they go there? Aren't they free? Because you
hear that from the left here in this country about
college education should be free. It's free in Europe, yeah

(01:45):
it is. You know where. It's also free here in
the United States. Now it's also free. Yeah, the US
military academies. You can go there for free. In fact,
i'll pay you. You got this thing, though, you got
to get in first. Now Europe, Europe, yeah, they have
great colleges and universities, but you have to really do

(02:09):
well to get in. I will give you a case
in point. My wife's cousin. Cousin did extraordinarily well, and
school parents sent them to the called the American School
in Athens, Greece. Again tutors every single day that they're

(02:29):
putting in all the work. Did very very well in school,
did not get in, did not get into the university
he wanted to get into and Greece, which would have
been free. His safety school, you know what, his safety
school was Oxford. Now, Oxford's a hell of a lot cheaper,

(02:51):
you know, for the you know, Europeans, it's also cheaper.
The schools here in the United States, but that was
a safety school. That's how difficult it is to get
into these colleges and universities in Europe, Asia, China. My
brother happens to be a professor at but he's working
at an American college in China, but also having Chinese

(03:16):
students going to that American college in China. It's a business,
always has been a business. I've talked about hedge fund uh,
hedge fund universities. You know how they go about running
their business, Well, many of them at this point in time.

(03:39):
The numbers don't make any sense. And they did it
to themselves. They did it to themselves. There's not a
lot of you know, smart leadership, you know, hiring all
of these ridiculous administrators rather than hiring professors. Again, you
got a arms race. You know, we're all geez. You know,

(03:59):
the University of Georgia is putting up a fancy rock
climbing wall and brand new gym. Well, we've got to
compete with that too in order to attract students, and
then they've got to spend the money on that. Well,
kids are recognizing right now, and maybe parents are starting

(04:20):
to wake up to g what's my return on investment
to that small liberal arts college that wants to charge
eighty five ninety thousand dollars a year. Wouldn't it wouldn't
it be better just to go to a state school. Again,

(04:42):
I live in the state of Florida. I don't know.
I don't think they've raised tuition, and I don't know.
Eight ten years here, the value for your money as
far as going to a state, state college or university here,
it's stordinary. It's a no brainer. So brandon the fact

(05:03):
that they're going to have to build more here in
the state because the amount of people that have moved
here to the state. It's very, very difficult. You know,
Florida State, for example, used to be a bit of
a safety school for many people around the country. As
a matter of fact, lie longer, not a longer. It's

(05:24):
way too good of a value and way too many
kids want to go there. At this point in time.
It always matters what's going to happen to many of
these small schools. Well, it's been happening. It's been happening.
Many of them are just not going to make it,
and without a doubt, there is going to be some repercussions.
Some ideas that we floated over the years is, you know,

(05:47):
maybe change things up a little bit, maybe change things up.
You know, maybe you turn yourself, turn yourself into a
vocational school, have a vocational school type of drift. But
then also as well, you can teach the classics, you
can have philosophy classes go going along with that, you

(06:08):
can teach entrepreneur classes. It's interesting you take it with
the Wall Street journally their top rankings of colleges and universities.
You know what number two was on the list, Babson,
Babson outside of Boston, now number two, Stanford was ranked one. Again,
you don't have to pay that much attention to these things,

(06:29):
but many of the schools on there that offer entrepreneurship
programs continue to rise on that list. We're all said
and done. Yeah, we're gonna see consolidation. You're gonna see
colleges go under. I get all that. We're gonna get
these college and universities are going to be pushing the
administration to get those visas in gear because guess what,

(06:50):
those kids pay full freight. They pay full freight because
there again they couldn't get in. They may have done
very very well, but they couldn't get in back at
home parents willing to send them here. That is the
reality of the terrain right now. And guess what, not
looking good. Not looking good for many, many, many small

(07:11):
liberal arts schools all across the country. Watchdog on Wallstreet
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