Michigan now offering free online courses/certificates to alumni

1. I’m not asking for more tax payer dollars to get more clients so I can maintain my paycheck or get a raise. 

2. Yes there’s a difference, but it still absolutely does not change the facts I stated regarding this. 

3. Not trying to be rich, just being real and direct. Sometimes I’m too direct, but I don’t like being fake. 

Thanks for your perspective. Makes sense. 

Most people get the cause and effect of higher education pricing backwards.  College isn't expensive because costs are high.  Costs are high because college is expensive.

College is expensive because of the high value our society places upon a college degree -- your life options are quite limited without one.  The market prices a college education accordingly.  This bothers people, in general, because, as a society, we've decided we want education to be available to people of all means -- so we add government subsidies.  However, as any economist can tell you, the primary effect of a demand-side subsidy is higher (retail) prices; if the market decides that a widget is worth $50, and the government decides to provide a $40 subsidy per widget to make it more affordable, the price will eventually rise to $90, where supply and demand will meet once again.

Because colleges are nonprofits, they have to spend this money somehow; hence, large administrative staves.  Furthermore, there's a perverse incentive -- the more that they can spend, the more they can cry poverty and appeal for additional government subsidies.

If your entire goal were to cut the price of higher education, the most effective approach would be to eliminate all federal student aid and to apply a punitive tax on student loans and scholarships -- just as the most effective way to cut the price of health care would be to outlaw Medicare, Medicaid, and all private insurance.  However, these would have immense social costs, and so they're not practical options -- at the end of the day, the most effective isn't necessarily the best.

The second-most-effective way to cut the price of higher education would be to increase the number of jobs in the workforce that don't require college, or to fund competing educational options (vocational training, etc.).  Either of these will drive down the demand for college, and thus will drive down its price.

The longer that we continue to position college as an absolute requirement for a successful future, the longer its price will rise.

I do it, you do it, we all do it. 

I agree this is true in many fields.  But you are overlooking the importance of credentials in the modern job market.  As has been pointed out above, if you want a decent job these days, you almost certainly need a bachelor's degree and there's a good chance you need a post-graduate degree as well.  Can you still read and study things for your own personal enrichment and learn a comparable amount?  Often, yes you can--though often you cannot.  But even when you can, independent study outside a degree program is not going to produce a credential that will enable you to compete for employment in that field.  That's especially true in licensed professions like law or medicine--if you don't have the degree, you can't get the license, no matter how much independent learning you may have done.

Given the importance of such credentials in the 21st century job market, promoting opportunity and upward mobility requires that we ensure broad access to those credentials.  We provide public funding for K-12 education because in the past, a high school diploma was an adequate credential for most purposes--as well as the extensive benefits an educated populace provides in an industrial democracy.  But times have changed.  A college degree now is the approximate equivalent to what a high school diploma once was.  So the argument for publicly-funded college education (or "free college," as you have deemed it) is that requiring students to pay ungodly amounts of tuition for the basic credential needed to secure decent employment in the modern economy stifles upward mobility and denies economic opportunities to working-class and indeed many middle-class young people.  You can agree or disagree with that argument if you want, but it's far from a frivolous position and at any rate is not vulnerable to any claim that "well you can just read shit on your own."

Your situation is all too common in the modern postsecondary education landscape.   Continue fighting the good fight, educating our future leaders, and performing an underappreciated, yet societally beneficial, service.