WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama rolled out a new plan to make two years of community college free, or nearly so, for millions of students across the country. It would be a major investment, which the White House said would change the face of higher education.
Obama’s plan, inspired by new programs in Tennessee and Chicago, could benefit up to 9 million students, his advisers said. At its heart is federal funding that would cover 75 percent of tuition, with the states picking up the rest of the cost.
“What I’d like to do is to see the first two years of community college free for everybody who is willing to work for it,” Obama said. He announced the plan in a video shot on Air Force One. It was posted Thursday on Facebook, ahead of a visit Friday to a community college and technical center in Knoxville, Tennessee.
It’s Going To Be Expensive
White House advisers declined to say how much the proposal would cost or how the government planned to pay for it. Experts said it could cost the federal government tens of billions of dollars.
The plan would make two years of college “the norm,” White House adviser Cecelia Munoz said. Over the last three decades, average tuition at a public four-year college has soared more than 250 percent, according to government figures.
The community college proposal echoes one of Obama’s favorite themes: empowering the middle class through education and opportunity. He sees the decline in state and federal funding for higher education as a major barrier to those aspiring to become members of the middle class.
Obama’s proposal would make two years of community college “as free as high school for responsible students,” Munoz told reporters. The plan would save a full-time community college student an average of $3,800 in tuition per year. The president also wants to propose a new fund to pay for technical training programs that provide schooling as well as hands-on job training.
In the Tennessee program, students can enroll at any of the state’s 27 colleges of applied technology or community colleges that offer an associate’s degree. They can also attend a four-year public university offering a two-year associate’s degree.
Congress Will Be A Hard Sell
Obama first needs Congress to approve the money for any program.
“Anything involving more money to pay for things is going to be difficult in this Congress,” said Ben Miller, an education policy analyst at the New America Foundation. Republicans, who control Congress, are often against paying for large, new government programs. “Increasing investments in higher education are just hard to find,” he said.
Still, Munoz noted, Tennessee’s program is in a state with a Republican governor.
She said the proposal would appeal to Republicans and Democrats alike.
So far, Obama’s efforts to reduce the cost of college have not been that successful. He has tried to tie financial aid to how well colleges help poorer students afford school. He has urged states to take school performance into consideration when distributing money to their public colleges. Obama has raised by $1,000 the maximum Pell Grant award, the government grant that helps students from poor and middle-class families attend college. The student loan system has been changed to cut out special fees banks charged for providing college loans.
Wide-Ranging Tuition Costs
For those who want to attend a two-year college, the costs are not nearly as daunting as a four-year university.
This school year, tuition prices for in-state students at public four-year colleges range from $4,646 in Wyoming to $14,712 in New Hampshire.
By comparison, community colleges cost $2,719 in Wyoming and $6,500 in New Hampshire. Vermont community colleges, the highest, cost $7,320.
Some students spend their first two years of college at a community college and then transfer to a four-year university. For them, free tuition for the first two years would make a big difference, White House policy staffers say
The effect on students’ ambition would be another benefit, Miller said.
“There’s a clarity of message that would be good for students,” he said. “We see right now that so many students and families really don’t have a great sense of how much college is going to cost.”
Families dramatically overestimate the cost, he said.
If a sixth grader thinks he doesn’t have any chance of going to college because his family cannot afford it, “that’s discouraging,” Miller said. “You may conclude there’s no point in trying.”
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