I am a fiscal conservative, but I absolutely can get behind the free community college idea. It would be a net gain for the economy in my opinion as we could significantly reduce student loans to strictly means-tested criteria.

There's also a lot of jobs that don't really need degrees, either. One of the main ones I'm thinking of is teachers. Anyone can learn to teach, and an apprenticeship program might be better at actually getting good teachers (plus, it would let them see a few years in the classroom, meaning that they can decide if it's for them early on, and then leave before they start, hopefully decreasing teacher turnover rate). Then you could add specialization at all levels for subject area, and so they do their apprenticeship in the area they want to teach. Oh, and stop elementary school teachers from being generalists while we're at it; that's where a lot of the problem with basic math ability lies, from my experience as a high school math teacher. These teachers honestly have to take the state-mandated tests multiple times because of basic high school level math, yet we expect them to teach kids well...

In California, community college is $46/unit. Typical full time enrollment is 12-15 units. And low income individuals get that fully covered. They are in the process of making the first year of community college fully subsidized for all residents.