President Obama’s proposal to make community college free sparked a debate over the plan’s ambition, expense and details. We’ll feature some of those arguments here on Grade Point.
Should Community College be Tuition-Free?
President Obama’s proposal to eliminate tuition for America’s community college students would send an important message to students that college is affordable. Too many potential students are discouraged by confusing information about college prices and by the complexity of the financial aid system. A real improvement over the Tennessee plan on which it is purportedly based and some other “free college” plans is that the Obama strategy would allow students to keep their Pell grants to help with living expenses, while benefiting from free tuition.New federal dollars combined with a simple message about affordability might help to narrow the gaps in college attainment across people from different socioeconomic backgrounds. But this proposal has weaknesses that should send policymakers back to the drawing board.About half of full-time community college students — and more than three-quarters of those from low-income families — already get grant aid that fully covers their tuition. They may still face financial difficulties as they devote time to their studies instead of working full-time. But tuition is not the issue.Increasing college success is the real challenge, not just getting students through the door.Only about one-third of students who enroll in community colleges earn any sort of credential within six years. We should focus on improving the guidance students receive about where and what to study and on strengthening the academic, personal and financial supports available to enrolled students. We know something about how to increase the success of at-risk students, but the necessary steps are not cheap. The current proposal would not put extra money into institutional budgets. In fact, the opposite is more likely.Why make tuition free for affluent community college students but not for those low-income students who opt for four-year colleges?Many low-income students who aspire to four-year degrees enroll directly in four-year institutions, significantly increasing their chances of ever earning a bachelor’s degree. The proposed program could divert resources from broad-access public universities and lead to rising tuition in the public four-year sector. A significant number of community college students are from middle- or upper-income backgrounds, and universal free tuition could cause that number to grow, generating capacity constraints at these already underfunded institutions.The administration is right to worry about accountability measures for both institutions and students, but new accountability rules could add significant complexity and compliance challenges — and risk invalidating the promise of “free.”The details are not clear, but the indication is that the threshold for participation in the “free tuition” program would be higher for both students and institutions than it is for federal financial aid programs. Higher standards are needed, but they should apply to all federal funding, and to all students and institutions receiving that funding.Addressing the college affordability challenge requires thinking big, and the conversation generated by the Obama proposal is valuable. But other less dramatic-sounding ideas may be more constructive. Simplifying the financial system and the application process, making it easy for all borrowers to repay their students loans in manageable proportion to their incomes, and strengthening the Pell grant program to better support student success would go farther — at lower cost — than eliminating community college tuition.