Undergraduates with family income below $200k will be tuition-free at MIT

This is a great step in the right direction. I can't speak directly for MIT, but there are issues with how these programs don't apply to parents with small family businesses. My parents had a small business, with my father taking home a salary of $XX,XXX. Duke University used the business assets to determine the EFC (expected family contribution) of literally 90% of the salary. Essentially saying to sell off the family business for the college fund, which was a non-starter.

Small businesses are allegedly the backbone of America, and I feel these tuition support programs overlook this segment of the middle-class.

Why are such things in the US so complicated? Where I live, studying is much much cheaper for most professions,for everyone!

That's the only fair way. Also, a set of well educated people pays itself back later in the form of mostly income and added value taxes, which provides money to keep studying for cheap for the next generation.

the ideal is that college should be very expensive for rich people and cheap, free, or at least more affordable, for less wealthy people.

american universities get closer to this ideal than you might expect. the days of outrageous student debt are thankfully fading away, at least for undergraduate degrees.

it would make more sense to do this redistribution through taxes if possible, but many US institutions are private so that doesn’t really work. so the colleges basically have their own privately-run means testing programs, and like all such programs there are flaws and loopholes.

Why should college be very expensive for rich people?

According to the old story, the New York Times asked a famous bank robber why he robbed banks. The answer: Because that's where the money is.

The money for funding public and quasi-private (universities and hospitals) institutions has to come from somewhere. Making it equally affordable for everybody doesn't raise enough money to maintain operations. Same for funding the government.

Granted, I think all of those institutions are due for reforms, which have little chance of happening right now, but still, I think the basic funding equation can't be eliminated.

> The money for funding public and quasi-private (universities and hospitals) institutions has to come from somewhere. Making it equally affordable for everybody doesn't raise enough money to maintain operations. Same for funding the government.

That's what taxes are for: you take proportionally more from people with more assets. I find the entire conversation about "not wanting my tax dollars to pay for some millionaire's kids' education", because those millionaires would end up paying the difference in taxes (under a fair system) than they do now.

That's without even considering the perverse incentives at play when a wealthy parent can use the payment or withholding of payment for education as a way to control their kids. Just because a parent is wealthy it doesn't necessarily mean that the kid would have access to those funds, or that explicit or implicit requirements that could be imposed to access those funds would be reasonable.