Just two weeks before his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama announced a bid that would make the first two years of community college free for responsible students.

To be a responsible student, you must maintain a 2.0 GPA, participate in 8 hours of community service per semester and have a mentor. Obama’s plan is modeled after Tennessee’s policy that provides tuition-free classes for students going to school at least part-time and who maintain a 2.5 GPA. Under the plan, states would also be required to provide more student support services on community college campuses.

There are so many reasons why “universal and free community college” is a good idea, but I have limited space so I’ll go with the classic Founding Fathers’ argument.

The Founding Fathers were all about that public education. Seriously, though. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were on different sides of the aisle and even they both agreed on the importance of funding public education.

Jefferson said that the funding public education was a worthy investment, because it would be “less than a thousandth part” what the kings would make if they rose up because of the country’s ignorance. Look at Jefferson, waxing philosophic. But anyway, he was right.

America has one of the worst wealth gaps in the world, and those deviations line up similarly to educational gaps in America.

We do not need free community college so that everyone in America can be rich – mostly because that’s not how money works.

We need free community college so that every single hard working person gets the equal opportunity for upward mobility, better quality of life, higher wages and the character-building that so often accompanies the college experience.

I think it is safe to say I would not be here if my dad had not found a path to higher education. My dad grew up as one of six kids in a two-bedroom apartment in Jerusalem, Palestine. He graduated high school at 16 and did a bit of college at Birzeit University, but could not continue his education until the age of 22 when he met the late Alma Hanson who offered him a chance to study at none other than St. Edward’s University.

Looking back, my dad told me that he probably would have eventually been able to make his way to college and climb the ladder to success, but that the process was no doubt expedited by my adoptive grandma’s philanthropy. My dad skipped two grades and graduated high school at the age of 16. Maybe I am biased, but my dad is probably a genius. Do you know the only thing that stopped him from getting to college? The cost. Grandma Hanson helped him through his first year of undergrad at St. Edward’s, and now my dad has not one but two master’s degrees, in chemistry and business administration.

That situation is a little different because it was the work of a philanthropic individual, but it shouldn’t have to be.

In fact, Adams once wrote “the whole people must take upon themselves the education of the whole people and be willing to bear the expenses of it. There should not be a district of one mile square, without a school in it, not founded by a charitable individual, but maintained at the public expense of the people themselves.”

The men who founded this democracy thought “the whole people” (read: the representative government) should be funding education.

Now, we are not as cool as the Scandinavian countries that basically fund college for everyone, but Obama’s plan is on the right track towards quality education.