Say, what? In order to get the Bernie grant, states are forced to either hold or increase their per-student spending. So if a state, let's say California, were to find an effective way to reduce per-pupil cost without reducing the quality of education students get, California - and all of California's public college and university undergraduates - would instantly become ineligible for the assistance Bernie Sanders is proposing.

Many institutions - both private and public - are already finding ways to reduce cost without degrading quality of education, for example by increasing online classes and distant learning or allowing students to take classes at a nearby college and transfer credit for a course their main institution does not offer at all at a time convenient for the student rather than starting a brand new class or department. All of these efforts would be undermined by Sanders' plan, and the success of those efforts would bring punishment from a Sanders Department of Education.

If Sanders merely wanted to stop states from cutting and passing the cost onto the federal government, he could have done so by mandating that the federal government did not pay a greater percentage of the tuition from one year to the next, rather than by mandating state spending.

When Bernie Sanders' cavalier attitude towards states that would not take the money he is offering is coupled with states like California that have seen some success in lowering the cost of higher education, even the states previously viewed as "good actors" might not end up qualifying for the Sanders Free College Plan.

In essence, the Sanders plan would force institutions of higher learning to increase their costs in order to stay tuition free to their in-state students. This pressure for cost growth rather than containment is sure to quickly blow up the cost of implementing the program as well, turning it into nothing more than a racket for public institutions the way for-profit education is a racket for for-profit colleges.

Hillary Clinton's College Compact, on the other hand, encourages and rewards colleges and states for lowering cost without sacrificing quality.

"But other countries can do it, why not us?" This is often the question of both first attack and last resort. The question is formed on the basis of mostly European models of higher education, which are themselves deeply flawed and are guilty of holding back students based on test scores.

The European "Free College" Model

European countries not only generally deal with a centralized higher education system rather than a multitude of public and private systems that can exist even within a state in the US, they employ cost controls that won't sit well with most Americans.

In France, for example, entry to university is severely restricted by the French Baccalauréat exams, administered in three levels which determine both what a student can study and in which universities. Only students who make the cut can go to top public institutions - which makes their parents ability to afford private tutors a key factor, regardless of the students' background, educational and extracurricular achievements.

Another reason European countries can keep cost under control is because their faculty is far less well compensated than in the United States. In many European countries, tenure is near impossible to achieve (9% in Germany) or simply doesn't exist (UK). Bernie Sander's plan, on the other hand, mandates that the states receiving help to create no-cost tuition for students employ 75% of their higher education staff either on tenure or on a tenure track.

While tenure is an effective way to retain top faculty and makes sure they don't simply leave for higher-paying private institutions, it also increases cost. Europe essentially deals with this problem by having far fewer private institutions, and some European countries have none.

Bernie Sanders is not giving us a European model, because he knows that there's no way the US could practice the type of centralized control over education that European countries have, and that an attempt to do so would both be hardline radical and unconstitutional.

What Bernie Sanders is giving us is the other extreme. He is giving us a plan that relies on states, including red states, to chip in $1 for every $2 the federal government puts in. He is giving us a plan that forces states and institutions to grow cost and punishes them for innovating to reduce cost. He is giving us a plan that is, as designed, impossible to implement. He is giving us a plan that gets all the fundamentals wrong.

[Author's note and acknowledgment: Dr. Suman Sen, who has served as a fellow and as a faculty member at Penn State, noted the differences between the Euroepan and American systems first in an email to me, and I thank him for pointing me in the right direction for the last section of this essay.]