I was thinking about how states could offer free college education at a low cost …

There has been a lot of talk about making college education free for students. Usually the proposal involves either a new tax on the rich or cobbling together existing funding streams, adding a little extra money here and there, and saying that college is now free. The prior idea often is dismissed as politically impossible, and the later idea while implemented is misleading at best, as usually it involves little additional funding and doesn’t cover the cost of fees and housing during college.

But maybe the answer exists today with the infrastructure built during the pandemic — remote learning. Let students get full college experience via Zoom or other video lecture. There is no limit on class-size for Zoom lecture, a classroom could span a whole state or even the world for relatively little money compared to old ways of educating. Online tests and quizzes can be automatically graded by a server. Papers and essays could be submitted electronically for review by the professor and adjuncts. For other quizzes and tests, where there is a concern about cheating, local High Schools could be used in the evenings with paid test proctors to administer the tests in a secure environment. Likewise, High Schools could be used in group discussions in the evenings, connecting with the professor over Zoom.

There once was a bias against remote learning and remote work. But the pandemic has struck many of those prejudices down, showing it can work. While part of human connection is lost over Zoom, already many traditional classes were taught in large, impersonal lecture halls. The remote learning infrastructure could be made so much cheaper that it would be easy for states to fund unlimited learning and certification of people wanting to learn new skills to advance their careers, improve their knowledge, or learn more about a subject.

Already, there are many colleges like MIT and Penn State that offers free online lectures and textbooks. It’s a good start, but there is no formal testing or certifications after participating in such courses. But adding this component to learning process could be a very economical way for states to provide free learning to all their citizens. People could gain new skills throughout the careers, advancing the work force and allowing their citizens become more knowledgeable about the world.