Free tuition will be expensive.

President Obama in his State of the Union address laid out a proposal, introduced earlier this month, offering interested students free community college tuition. Obama made the announcement in a Facebook video recorded on Air Force One and offered few initial details for the plan, other than saying it would be part of the speech.The program, America's College Promise, could cost taxpayers at least $60 billion over 10 years, according to the White House. But the monetary hit may only be a fraction of its cost.The White House forecasts 9 million students would participate in the program. Donald Generals, president of the Community College of Philadelphia and one of many educators who has praised the idea, estimates the initiative would boost the school's enrollment by 15 percent.In an op-ed for Philadelphia magazine, Bryan Buttler, a writer and communications professor, points out that increased enrollment would "simply be pumping out more students with more degrees that essentially mean nothing.""There's this big romantic notion of the four-year college degree, and there's a lot of pressure from social institutions to get students into college at all costs," Buttler wrote in an email to Watchdog. "That doesn't help the value of the system, nor does it really help the student."Could this plan work? Yes," he said, "but let's actually look at what these students would be learning."Buttler said community colleges operate as "transfer mills," moving some students on to four-year institutions. He thinks community colleges should be reimagined as training facilities that provide students with real-world tools and technical skills they'll rely on beyond the classroom."I can see how the system has failed so many students who think that, by completing some sort of degree, they've set themselves up for success, only to find that, six months after graduation, they're still ringing people up at Best Buy or answering phones at a call center," Buttler said.The financial burden of America's College Promise attracted immediate criticism.The proposal will serve as little more than a federal handout to the community college system, said Lindsey Burke, a Will Skillman Fellow in Education at the Heritage Foundation.In Pennsylvania, 201,900 students are enrolled in community colleges and pay an average tuition of $3,686 for the 2014-15 academic year, according to the Pennsylvania Commission for Community Colleges. The cost of covering community college tuition in Pennsylvania for one year would be more than $744 million, though Obama's proposal only covers two years per student and would require a level of academic achievement to qualify for aid.Pennsylvania community college costs are covered by income from four sources: local, state, student (tuition and fees) and private support. Each school also sets its own tuition."What will prevent community colleges from raising tuition and fees once the federal government begins paying the tab? The White House says the federal government will pay three-quarters of the costs of 'average' tuition at community colleges," Burke said, "but we'll most certainly see the definition of 'average' increase in the years to come thanks to this new federal largesse."And all of this spending is unlikely to help low-income students, who already have access to Pell Grants, which likely cover the bulk of their tuition obligations at community colleges.Community College of Philadelphia charges city residents $153 per credit hour; all other students pay $306. Students are charged a slew of additional fees that help pay for college programs and services, such as a $28 technology fee per credit hour, which helps fund things such as campus computer labs. It's not clear yet if America's College Promise will help defray those additional fees, including the $1,200 the school estimates students shell out for books and supplies each year.The state Department of Education is contributing $266 million to community colleges this year, representing a sliver of the $1.215 billion it funds all of Pennsylvania's higher education institutions. Facing what Gov. Tom Wolf forecasts as a $2.3 billion deficit, the commonwealth could not subsidize additional tuition costs without finding new funding streams."Without knowing the details," PDE spokesman Tim Eller told pennlive.com, "the department is concerned about how this initiative would be funded."America's College Promise was inspired by the Tennessee Promise scholarship program; that state provides two years of free community or technical college tuition and professional mentorship opportunities. The Tennessee program strives to improve the percentage of state residents with a two-year degree from 30 percent to 55 percent by 2025. Tennessee's Promise launched last year and is paid for through a $360 million endowment from state lottery reserves, as well as federal money.