Document Tag: free college

How America’s College Promise Would Reshape the Free College Landscape (2023)

Rising college costs and attainment gaps have motivated states to pass “promise” programs for free community college tuition and motivated President Biden to champion a proposal for nationwide free community college called America’s College Promise (ACP).
An underrated aspect of ACP is that it eliminates tuition before other grants are applied, freeing the Pell Grant to cover non-tuition costs. Many state programs only cover students’ tuition balances after other grants, including Pell.
Most community college students would qualify for ACP. However, only 31 percent of community college students in states with promise programs receive grants. Most programs appear to reach less than 10 percent.
TCF’s analysis finds that total grants received by the average promise program recipient would be 56 percent greater under ACP (an average of $8,900), and 51 percent among Pell Grant recipients (an average of $10,600).
Even if every U.S. state adopted a last-dollar promise program in the vein of existing programs, community college students nationwide would receive only 19 cents for every dollar that America’s College Promise would make available.
If states continue their promise programs as living stipends, low-income community college students could see a massive increase in their total financial assistance through the combined power of ACP, the Pell Grant, and state aid.

Should community college be free? Education Next talks with Sara Goldrick-Rab and Andrew P. Kelly (2016)

President Obama’s proposal for tuition-free community college, issued earlier this year, seems to have laid down a marker for the Democratic Party. Vermont senator Bernie Sanders is touting his plan for free four-year public college on the primary trail; Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren called for “debt-free college” in a high-profile speech; and former senator and U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton has proposed her own plans for tuition-free community college and “no-loan” tuition at four-year public colleges. In this forum, Sara Goldrick-Rab, professor of educational policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and co-author of a paper that helped shape the president’s plan, calls for an even more expansive effort-one that includes funding for students’ living and other expenses while they pursue an associate degree at any public institution. Andrew Kelly, director of the Center on Higher Education Reform at the American Enterprise Institute, argues that the Obama plan will not address low rates of college readiness and student success but will strain public budgets and crowd out innovation.

A Matter of Trust: Applying Insights From Social Psychology to Make College Affordable (2016)

The rising price of higher education threatens educational opportunity and social mobility for the most vulnerable Americans.
Increasing college attendance benefits individuals and society, but efforts to reduce the price via financial aid rely primarily on
economic theory: emphasizing short-term investments for long-term gains, and aiming for efficiency by targeting a narrow band
of the population. Yet financial aid as currently implemented fails to effectively counter price barriers to college attainment.
We argue that these failures are due, in part, to policies that were built on a narrow set of behavioral assumptions about
the role of pricing in individuals’ decisions to attend college. Insights from social psychology highlight decisions’ relational
processes and contexts. Existing policy failures have eroded public trust in financial aid as a legitimate, viable mechanism for
college affordability. Cost-effective reforms that rebuild trust are a promising direction for future policy making.