President Obama is set to propose two years of free community college for American workers this Friday in an effort to make community college as universal as high school is today. According to USA Today, he believes that allowing free post-high school education will be allow people of all ages to better compete in our current economy.

Fox News reports that the proposed plan would cover enough tuition to get students who keep their grades up an associate's degree or halfway to a bachelor's. To be more precise, students would be required to maintain a 2.5 GPA while in college, and must make steady progress toward completing their program in order to have their tuition eliminated.

In a video statement this past Thursday, Obama said, "Put simply, what I'd like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for anybody who's willing to work for it... It's something we can accomplish, and it's something that will train our workforce so that we can compete with anyone in the world."

Obama continued, "It's not for kids... We also have to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to constantly train themselves for better jobs, better wages, better benefits." 

However, the proposed plan requires action from a Republican-dominated Congress before it can be realized. So far, they don't seem very excited. Cory Fritz, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, stated, "With no details or information on the cost, this seems more like a talking point than a plan."

Furthermore, the details of how much the program would cost are not yet concrete. The White House has said that details will be issued in The State of the Union Address on January 20, and that 9 million students are expected to participate and save up to $3,800 a year for two years. That would place the cost at nearly $70 billion.

What do you think of this new proposition?