If it is “free”, then maybe the students will get what they paid for: 4 wasted years of life and useless degrees that will help them get good paying minimum wage jobs at Starbucks.
Universities get billions in free money for fake students. Sign up a fake student, get guarabteed money from the taxpayer. It does require a little bit of investment. Perhaps a couple of dorms to isolate them from the real students who dont want volume 11 crap music and parties at 2 AM. Perhaps a building to have elementary school level fake classes to reduce the chance of harrassment of the other students (especially blond girls). Perhaps some special graduation ceremonies to keep families proud of their children for becoming doctors or lawyers or engineers from having to witness the volume 12 hooting and hollaring and carrying on with the potential for brawls for people getting a degree for 3rd grade reading comprehension.
Not in any way saying all poor people are like this, but there are plenty of organizations and scholarships to help the self motivated. And perhaps perhaps college would not be so expensive if free money guaranteed by the government was not driven up by how much government is willing to pay. Also if they returned schools to a place of learning rather than a club med, perhaps students could return to being able to mostly self fund with a normal job again