Starting next fall, Oregon’s 2016 high school graduating class will be eligible to attend community college for free, or almost free. The shift is expected to bump up community college attendance by as much as 25 percent.

Yet the “deal” is far less special than it’s being made to sound, and the results may well be far less than supporters hope.

The truth is, thanks to federal Pell Grants and other student aid programs, many community college students in Oregon already have their tuition picked up by someone else. The Oregon Promise program will expand that pool, largely to children whose family income makes them ineligible for much in the way of aid, according to The Oregonian. All students will be required to put up $50 per term, attend school full time and maintain a 2.5 (C+) grade-point average to keep the money coming.

The hope is that the combination of two years of largely free tuition will serve to get kids hooked on college, so much so that they go on to earn a degree or certificate.

Alluring as that sounds, there are serious potential problems.

While the program is free to students, someone — state and federal taxpayers — will pick up the tab. The state’s portion is set at $10 million, but it’s only part of the picture.

More important, something like two-thirds of students entering community college now must take remedial course work, according to the Community College Research Center, and only about a quarter of those ever go on to graduate. The cost of all that remediation is pegged at about $4 billion per year.

Adding more students to community college classrooms seems unlikely to improve those numbers.

What would make the numbers better is an educational system that turned out high school graduates who could do the work attending college requires. Clearly, Oregon falls short of that mark for many high schoolers, and the problem is not much better elsewhere.

Yet unless students can go to community college ready to do the work required there, the Oregon Promise is likely to remain an empty one. Students would be better served by strong high school educations, whether or not community college is in their future.