Including the veterans' programs, whose participants earned them the hard way, or for that matter, the other examples you give.

I took the idea of universal "free" college for certain fields to be a literal statement, i.e. nobody pays. I submit that this will unavoidably reduce the value of such an education.

To take it to an extreme, if everyone in America had the "right" to a four-year college education at no cost (and believe it or not, I've heard people propose this), what sort of colleges and faculties do you think we'd end up with? How many students would succeed under those circumstances?

Do you think the response under such a system to people who see college as a right and not something to be earned, would be to boot those people out of the system, or reduce standards?