Yes, the lectern was driving home Mr. Cuomo’s talking point.

Mrs. Clinton was there because she had pushed the idea after borrowing much of it from Bernie Sanders. Mr. Cuomo got the idea from both of them. It’s not as if free tuition for the middle class was a dream that has been burning in the governor’s heart since he was growing up in middle-class Queens. It was, as he said on Wednesday, a bolt of insight from watching the presidential race.

And so, a few months later, it came to pass: the Excelsior Scholarship, for students from families making up to $125,000 a year (by 2019) who attend the State University of New York or the City University of New York. This is how things can work in Albany, when a single-minded executive controls an opaque budget process, when wheeling and dealing occur behind closed doors. A big, ugly package of legislation emerges in the spring, with policies and surprises aplenty, and lawmakers approve it, lining up first and asking questions later.

The questions on free college have begun to multiply. We are not the only ones to notice that Mr. Cuomo didn’t seem to think his new scholarship through. How could he have, in the time allotted? This was not the product of extensive hearings or long study; there was no sense that it emerged because public-policy or higher-education experts — never mind students! — had told the governor, let’s examine what is keeping young New Yorkers out of college, and figure out how to get them in and keep them there.

So it’s not clear whether this would needlessly harm private colleges and universities by stealing students, as some officials have complained, or place damaging financial strains on the SUNY and CUNY systems, which have been starved of funds for years.

It’s not even clear how “outrageously ambitious” the program is. By one legislative estimate, it will reach only about 32,000 students. The program’s strict income limits leave a lot of people out. It is not for part-time students, a huge portion of the community-college population. Students have to earn 30 credits a year to participate. It’s not for poor families, who are expected to use the state’s Tuition Assistance Program or Pell grants or other aid to cover tuition. And even though the cost of room and board and books is what’s keeping many poor students out of college, the Excelsior Scholarship covers none of that.