Tuition free state education. First community college or trade school, followed by higher education for those that want to pursue it. The community college path would mean not needing freshman year at state university. The community colleges would also provide the education needed for technician type occupations. The trade schools would mean a supply of plumbers, electricians, mechanics, etc. and a career path to solid middle class occupations.
I like the idea of a post-highschool but pre-college institution of learning where students can test the waters of various industries.
It seems silly to me for a freshman to spend so many thousands of dollars to go to a college, not knowing what they want to do, and basically going on a test run to see how things go.
That's a risky and expensive gamble. Many people find out it's not for them. You don't have to dive right into the deep end to figure that out.
Also, many of the people that it is actually for end up spending years exploring the options to figure out what they want to end up studying. There's no reason to do that at the top dollar university (other than they would appreciate getting that money).
In principle it sounds like a good idea, but I'm afraid it might be too difficult to get all the different institutions to cooperate. In my experience, the universities would prefer students come take the classes at their schools over accepting transfers of credits from others. I don't see the universities being on board with losing a lot of business to free state schools.
On the other hand, with all the online schooling that happening, maybe the whole university model will become outdated and so they'll end up losing the business anyways. Then it doesn't matter.