We’re in a Moment: Making Community College Tuition-Free

In conversation with Chris Geary, senior policy analyst at New America’s Center on Education & Labor.

Q: Chris, I reached out to you after reading your blog post, “Free Tuition Could Solve Community College Enrollment Woes,” at the New America blog. Why do you think free tuition is a solution?

A: The skyrocketing cost of college is one of the most significant barriers to college access and completion. All efforts to make college affordable—especially those that involve free tuition plans—will help increase enrollment. But let’s back up and contextualize this current moment.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, community college enrollments have plummeted by nearly 17 percent. These enrollment declines have been particularly pronounced for Black male and Native American male students. Given this, and that community colleges serve more than half of all undergraduate students from low-income families, community college enrollment declines threaten to worsen pre-existing educational inequities.

Despite these national trends, recent enrollment data from Maine suggest that making community college tuition-free can stabilize community college enrollment. Only four months after announcing the Free College Scholarship—which covers 100 percent of tuition and fees for recent Maine high school graduates to attend any of the state’s seven community colleges—Maine’s community college enrollment increased by 12 percent from the year before. This increase reflects findings from prior research that found colleges with free tuition had significant enrollment increases when compared to nearby colleges without free tuition. Importantly, free tuition plans are associated with particularly large enrollment gains for Black and Latino students, which makes free community college a promising strategy to both increase enrollment and advance racial equity in higher education.

Read the full article here