Here are the approx costs to attend a community and suny college in NY. Assume you live on Long Island
Community college $6,500 per year which includes tuition, fees and books
SUNY $10,000 per year which includes tuition fees and books
So four year cost if you do 2 then 2. $ 33,000
Four year at SUNY. $40,000
If you qualify for a max pell grant. $5,775 a year or $22,300
If you qualify for the max tax break $2,500 or $10,000 for four years
Not everyone qualifies for the tax credit. It is based on income.
Most people don’t qualify for the pell grant
So for someone who has a low EFC if they commuted they could almost go to school for free IF they commuted. If you lived on campus they the costs will double.
My son is going to a SUNY. He will live on campus. Cost will be almost $90.000 for the four years.
Remember nothing is free. The Pell grant is the only free thing you get if you qualify. Subsidized loans are not free. Parent plus loans are not free.
The list of prices in various states doesn’t make sense to me – Illinois was on the list, and Illinois doesn’t have statewide CC fees. The costs (and quality) depend on where you are.
If you qualify for that aid and are in an area where community college is cheap, sure. Maybe. I have a friend a few hours away who is getting his Bachelor’s through a community college for “free”, through federal and state grants. He doesn’t pay a cent out of pocket and he has no debt, because his family is dirt poor.
I, on the other hand, am in debt. This year, I qualified for a small portion of the state need grant, 1k or so in subsidized loans, and the rest is in unsubsidized. My family saw a huge income spike and next year it’s going to be all unsubsidized. Cost is around $4500 a year for 15 credits and 3 quarters for my CC, but because I’m in Comp Sci I take summer quarters as well. No, I’m not going to have 100k in debt, but I’m likely to be in 20k+, half of which I wouldn’t have if CC was free.
Is it common for a CC to offer a bachelor’s degree? I thought by definition they were almost exclusively for AA/AS degrees and other CE credits/certificates.
I can only speak for Washington state, but it’s starting to become a thing, I think. . My CC offers a few bachelors degrees. Not any that I want, but 2-3. My friend’s community college offers a few, including the business degree he’s getting. I know of another community college that also serves as a satellite campus for a four year university, and offers I think 4 bachelor’s (mechanical engineering is one).
ETA: It might be a thing for CCs that are not in reasonable commuting distance to at least the satellite campus of a university?
Tuition (not room and board) at some NY schools rivals what a typical family pays for electronics in a year.Oh, you didn’t know electronics could be so cheap? OOS in NY is often lower than in-state for students in other states if they were to attend their state school. Yet when NYers go to other states they pay way way more. Is that because NYers are so generous they like subsidizing the educations of students from other states and from other nations? Seems so. Certainly the international students appear to be able to afford more. Many drive high end BMWs and other new high end cars. But there are few students from other states. It appears that the amazingly cheap tuition at SUNY isn’t enough to convince students from other states to attend a SUNY. I will add that the dorm costs can be amazingly high but that there are usually cheaper alternatives. It’s just that SUNY puts its money into dorms and recreational facilities instead of academics so the dorms can be very expensive. But after the first year most allow you to move off campus which can mean very low costs.
Perhaps the high costs for both community colleges and public universities in Vermont and neighboring New Hampshire are part of the reason for Sanders’ “free college tuition” plan. Presumably, those states with the highest public school tuitions would get the biggest subsidies from the national government.
"Cost not being a barrier " and “free” aren’t the same thing. This will end up a huge financial taxpayer-funded mess once we say college is a “right” and shud be free. Then EVERYBODY will have to have easy access to a college, the feds will come up with an inefficient one-size-fits all solution, and higher ed will become the postal. service.
I’m sorry that some people live in states where cc costs $7k, and I’m sorry some people live a 5-hour dog sled ride from a cc. But if those anomolies convince people that what this country needs is “free college” we’re all in big financial trouble.
CC can be free all it wants to be, but until there is a universal acceptance of courses, credit for credit, one throws away more than can be accounted for in hypothetical $$$. what good is a 2 year AA in whatever if only 3 of your 60 credits are accepted at the next level. in those cases, there is not a guaranteed 2 year path to a BA…costing not only money but time as well.
and its easy to say that one should “know” what will automatically transfer before starting, but its literally like comparing apples to sofas–every school may call English 105 something different, every school may have different definitions of what constitutes English 105 and get this, some schools have defined paths in which they pretty much only want you to take their English 105. if you extrapolate that by actual course related to degree it becomes even more difficult to compare.
i’m a huge believer in the CC system. but i’m always an eyes wide open kind of person.
In Massachusetts, there is something called the “MassTransfer” which guarantees credits, admission, and discounts to four-year state schools for students with acceptable GPAs (not sure what it is, but not just for tippy top students).
@romanigypsyeyes Some of Georgia State colleges offer BA degrees. State colleges in Georgia are equal to CC. They just took the word community college out. If you live next to one of the below colleges and depending on your major you can get a Bachelor degree. Some like Gordon State and Gwinnett even have dorms.
Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College
College of Coastal Georgia
Dalton State College
East Georgia State College
Georgia Gwinnett College
Gordon State College
Washington law requires four year universities to have direct transfer agreements with every community college in the state. You pick your school, input what your school calls English 105, and the website tells you what that transfers in as. Washington also has DTAs with most of the west coast. Alternatively, they could remove the BS requirement of being a dependent until 24, in which case a whole lot more people would qualify for the Pell Grant and state aid.
Every property owner pays hundreds to thousands of dollars per year toward our local community college. It is definitely not free. Students pay about 40% of the costs through their tuition. We actually will pay in our lifetimes about the same amount to community college as current in-state undergraduate tuition for an undergraduate degree at our state flagship for a service we are unlikely to ever use.
As an aside, those who bash the American postal service haven’t had much experience with the postal service around the world… fact is, for 49 cents – a small fraction of one hour’s wage of a minimal wage earner – you can send a letter in Hawaii and have it reach its destination in Maine three-four days later. Reliably. Most postal services don’t work this efficiently and this cheaply anywhere else in the world, including Europe.
The sad fact is that many of our young people are simply not prepared for college level work, even though they are nominally enrolled in “college.” I am dealing with a work situation involving a student who is failing my required gen ed literature class because he has significant reading issues. This student is registered with disability services and everything else, but is just not capable of reading or understanding college-level texts. This student transferred into my institution because he had a B average at a CC, but his verbal SAT score was below 400. My employer has a policy of accepting CC transfers without test scores as long as they have a B average at a CC. Unfortunately the B average at a CC, in my state at least, does not in itself indicate ability to perform adequately at a 4-year institution.
I do not believe that the CC experience in years 1-2 is the equivalent of the same experience at a 4-year school. No way.