What a mangled up web you have woven. First, you are running with the idea that the public paying for everyone to get a degree
Again, with the illiteracy. I never said everyone should get a degree. Rather, that college education should be free
to the student. Note: free to the student doesn't mean free...it means the expenses are not billed to the student. Students would still pay indirectly (through taxes and other contributions) before and after their time as students in their capacities in other roles.
is a benefit to society. It has been shown again and again, society does not support a 'higher paying job' for every single person if they had a degree.
If it was up to me, almost no one would have jobs...and that would be a good thing...but that's another topic, and clearly beyond what you're prepared to conceive of right now. In any case, I never said that society would support a higher paying job for everyone, nor did I say or expect that everyone would go to college. Rather, those who do should be able to pursue their education according to their interests and abilities, instead of their personal finances.
So the cost to value does not work out as a positive, to those people or society.
If you base your assessment upon narrow consumerist criteria AND presume continuation of the current arrangement of work roles AND you take no account of benefits personally and societally ignored by measures like GDP, then sure. If you don't make those completely unwarranted presumptions, then universal access (everyone being ABLE to go to college, which is not the same thing as everyone going to college) indeed might be a net loss.
Then you throw in that this would somehow change admission standards.... um, what does who is paying have to do with that?
If you don't understand the impact that financial strain has on performance -- as students or in any role -- then I'm not sure you're qualified to have a reasonable conversation about this topic.
Shouldn't they have performance based standards for admission anyway?
I'd love to see performance based standards. Instead, what we have is compliance- and finance-based standards: those with high grades (high compliance, not necessarily high performance) and better finances (those who can afford the luxury of dedicating years primarily or exclusively to focused study) are undeservedly favored. Genuine meritocratic admission requires -- at minimum -- an approximate leveling of the playing field (leveling UP...such that practical tests of ability reflect ability instead of who could afford to practice all week vs. who pulled a 60-hour workweek to make rent). We don't have anything close to that right now. Currently, students, teachers, administrators, and admissions officials alike all get together and engage in a make-believe game where they pretend that non-parallel grading systems from non-parallel school systems with non-parallel resources and opportunities for wildly disparately prepared students are actually the same one standard measure, and only superficial countenance (if any) is allotted to considering financial hardship, political or social disadvantage, health challenges, and a host of other things which have a heavy impact on performance.
And don't most, in fact, already have such things?
No. Right now, students are admitted or not based upon grades (institutional compliance, not performance) and money (comparably rated students with more money simply have dramatically better opportunities).
Some people have to work while going to college? Oh my, somebody call the whhaaaambulance.
As usual, you completely miss the point. Of course people deal with having to work. The point is that lumping together students who didn't wash a dish until they were 21 with others who have been working part or full-time since 15 is not meritocracy.
Live is tough, you rarely get to concentrate on one thing at a time, deal with it.
Ahh, I see...so you actually DON'T want a meritocracy after all...because you're perfectly OK with preserving artificial barriers to performance and pretending away the obstacles presented by several major demands on the time, energy, and opportunity of students.