Chile is introducing free higher education

It doesn't really make sense to forbid profit in education (at least the way the Chilean government does it). The best universities in the world make a lot of money (e.g. Harvard, MIT, Stanford). Opening the educational market should create competition and drive quality up. Of course the market should be regulated, but forbidding profit is not really the way to go.

What this article doesn't mention, and which hasn't been mentioned below, is that Chile's president, Michelle Bachelet, is a socialist. I am 100% in favor of eliminating fees for public universities by increasing state and federal funding. But this means voting for people who have socialist views. You won't get this from the democrats or the republicans, who are both in the pockets of the wealthy, who do not want to be taxed to pay for education for the middle and lower classes. Unless you're willing to say, "I believe in socialist principles, and I believe education should be without direct fees as a matter of principle or human rights, and it should be payed for through progressive income taxes", you won't see this reality in the US. We are far too neoliberal/laissez faire/anti-welfare state to collectively support an initiative like this, and that is a problem, IMO.

Reagan slashed the top marginal income tax rate, we tax capital at a higher rate than labor, and the wealthy have numerous mechanisms for reducing their tax burden through loopholes in the code. Until this is changed, there are a number of policies that sound nice, but which we can't pay for. But at present, the republicans won't go for it, and the democrats won't fight for it.

Prep schools in France can be damn selective as well. And prep schools tend to have contracts with universities so drop out from prep schools can be admitted to universities (they might or might not have to pass an exam for that). Prep schools are somewhat equivalent to the first two years of university, with a bit of literature/philosophy and foreign language classes, but prep schools are much intense and exams are harder (disclaimer: I did prep school and a "Grande Ecole", and and also have an Msc from a University).

I lived in Chile for several years. I think this is a bad idea for several reasons.

First off, one of the things that makes Chile great is that its education system is independant of the government. It results in chileans who are markedly better at critical thinking than americans. (While there one of the things I did was work with high school and college students and of course got to know a lot of chileans.) Their schools are all about education and keeping the people sending their kids there happy-- by educating them.

There is a real effect where the person paying the bills calls the shots. When government is paying the bills, turning out good citizens is the goal. This is why the football players are the heroes of most schools and the computer nerds are beat up. This is why schools are enacting absurd zero tolerance policies. This is why standardized tests and teachers tenure and unions are so bad.

There really is something to the market incentive to provide a better experience at lower cost...

The socialists are in power in chile right now but I don't think that will last long, and the reality is the Chilean constitution is pretty well protecting capitalism. Consequently the government runs a surplus does a great job of providing services and mostly stays out of peoples way... and Chile is the south american economic miracle as a result.

I came in here to make exactly your points 2 and 3. They cannot be overstated: they haven't even gotten the budget math to work out yet.

Given unlimited resources, sure, who wouldn't want free universities. But making it work within our real-life constraints means something else is going to suffer for that, and in today's reality it's going to be really hard to make the case that this is a priority. (Especially when many high school graduates are still basically illiterate, so only elite graduates will make it in, which means we'll be further subsidizing the elite).