In his recent State of the State address, Tennesee governor Bill Haslam unveiled his plan to offer free community college tuition.

What could this mean for California? Moorpark College?

As community college students trek through financial aid forms and front seemingly endless fees, the idea of free community college seems like a fantasy.

It’s painful to realize that one semester’s tuition could pay for a round-trip week vacation to the Bahamas – seriously.

With a single unit costing $46 dollars, not to mention non-resident students forking up a whopping $230 per unit, community college is becoming serious business.

The Community College Chancellor’s Office (CCCO) website breaks down facts stress the value of community college in California and what it could mean if it was all free.

When reduced to statistics, the numbers seem to speak for free education. California community colleges educate 70 percent of our state’s nurses; 80 percent of firefighters, law enforcement personnel and emergency technicians; they offer associate degrees and short-term job training certificates in more than 175 fields, and more than 100,000 individuals are trained each year in industry-specific workforce skills the website lists.

Supporters sing about the high return on college education and raising the bar to meet employment demands. Harvard economist Robert Barro published “Education and Economic Growth,” where he argues that providing more free education should not even be a debate.

“With respect to education, growth is positively related to the starting level of average years of school attainment of adult males at the secondary and higher levels,” says Barro.

Barro goes on to make the same claims about women, essentially drawing a positive correlation of the repercussions of education.

“California Community Colleges are the largest provider of workforce training in the state and nation,” CCCO writes.

Despite the fanfares, this is still an ongoing conversation between academics, politicians and citizens.

The other side that argues against feeding the masses academia as a solution. They stress the sacrifice of quality when quantity is the main objective as did Alison Wolf, a professor of public sector management at King’s College London, who wrote Does Education Matter? Myths About Education and Economic Growth.

“It [government] needs to eschew sheer quantity, and think about where there is a clearly demonstrated demand, about where and for what it should be paying, and about the quality of what is provided,” Wolf writes. “It is all too easy for developed as well as developing countries to sacrifice quality to quantity – a process more likely to reduce growth than stimulate it.”

Looking at the political climate in California today, especially considering the major feats in deficit reduction by Gov. Jerry Brown, it would be politically unfeasible as it is fiscally irresponsible to bring free community college to the masses.

Just as Wolf describes, the quality will suffer.

There is no sustainable source of revenue to cover the costs of such an undertaking even if, for instance, a solution is proposed like using the state’s lottery money as Tennessee is considering.

We are in a crisis of priorities, and right now, despite the seemingly positive possibilities, there is more at steak in our state than we can aspire to in our higher education.

If money were made available it would be better served in K-12, where the fundamentals and roots of education can be properly laid from the beginning, encouraging the next generation to pursue higher education out of their own ambition.

For those of us who pass up the Bahamas for another semester, we can rest assured that there is integrity in our pursuit and quality to our accomplishments – even if it does cost us an even tan.