A couple months ago, a nationwide program for providing two years of community college tuition-free seemed on the verge of becoming reality. So what went wrong?
Hello and welcome back to MarketWatch’s Extra Credit column, a weekly look at the news through the lens of debt.
This week, we’ll look at the history of the free community college movement, why it was left out of the bill and where the idea goes from here.The first time free community college grabbed headlines on a national level, Biden was also in the White House, but then as vice president.
In September, House Democrats outlined a plan as part of a suite of proposed Build Back Better initiatives that would make two years of community college free through a federal-state partnership. States that chose to opt into the plan would agree to bring community college tuition down to zero.
“It got stuck in the middle,” he added, noting that it wasn’t “a line in the sand for enough lawmakers.” Even when students are able to go to community college tuition-free thanks to state promise and other financial aid programs, they often struggle with living expenses, as well as balancing work, child care and other obligations. That dynamic led to an unprecedented decline in community college enrollment during the pandemic as students left college because they lost jobs when shops and restaurants closed, and had to watch their children who weren’t in school.
Valdellon and her family hustle to afford tuition, which they pay on a monthly basis. Her dad works two jobs and a typical weekday for Valdellon starts at 4 a.m., stocking for a retailer. She gets off work at noon and then tries to focus on her classes, which are mostly online, homework, and helping her dad and sister keep the house clean and the dog fed and walked. Not having to pay tuition for school would have allowed her to step back from her 37-hour work week.
In addition to the general political obstacles faced by all of the elements of the Build Back Better agency, free community college met pressure from some surprising corners: Other types of colleges. The initiative reportedly didn’t have widespread backing among all sectors of higher education over some concern that making community college free would draw students and dollars away from other types of schools.
The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities, an advocacy group for private, nonprofit colleges, took that approach, focusing on increasing the maximum Pell grant award, according to Paul Hassen, a spokesman for the organization. “At no time did our association lobby against free community college,” Hassen wrote in an email.
Our current financial aid system requires students to apply and get accepted to college before learning how much funding they’ll get. It also asks them to repeatedly prove their financial precarity. Critics say this has all been an obstacle to students, particularly low-income students or those from families with little experience with the college process and getting through school.
— Mike Krause, founding executive director of the Tennessee Promise program “There’s no question we entered in knowing that nothing sells like free,” he said. “What free college got Tennessee that I thought it might have been able to do nationwide is to radically alter the messaging and to make clear to folks that college is within reach.”Framing was important to the success of Tennessee Promise in another way too.
“Why weren’t national business organizations at the table around this as they have been in states?” Miller-Adams asked. “I don’t know what the answer is except that what it looks like a lot of national business organizations are doing is starting their own tuition free college programs as a kind of benefit for workers. Those tend to be narrow and a little bit hard to access and you don’t have a lot of choices.
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