Tennessee is more than a year into their free community college for all high school grads experiment, and so far it seems to be working. This article by the head of Indiana’s Ivy Tech suggests that community colleges across the country can use Tennessee as a model:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/a-blueprint-for-free-comm_b_9398858.html
Here’s hoping this thread doesn’t turn political…
It is working to a certain extent but we haven’t seen the success rate yet of turning those credits into Bachelors degrees. Lots of kids doing it though who would normally not even try for further ed.
I think it is extremely clear that something like this needs to have been in effect several years before any conclusions of success can be drawn. Failure would have been potentially much more obvious, but I would say ten years of observation and follow up would be optimal. Since optimal never applies to these things, five years should be the absolute minimum.
I agree with @fallenchemist an observation period is going to be needed to see the return of value in fully subsidizing community college. It is going to be important because a huge concern about community colleges in America is the very low success rate (I believe it was around 10-15%) for graduating and/or transferring students within 4 years. It will be interesting to see if the reason for this is 1) people cannot afford it and had to drop out 2) people don’t have the aptitude for college work even at community college level and drop out or 3) they may come from first generation families where college is unfamiliar and the students go in confused with what is expected or 4) community colleges can sometimes be rigid and require students to take remedial classes when students “fail” placement tests.
If the majority of community colleges were “accessible” in terms of pell grants and other aid for low income students to attend, will fully subsidizing it make a worthwhile difference? However, I can recognize that even then the costs of food, housing, and transportation is financially prohibitive for some. It will be interesting to see how community colleges react to these subsides (over 4-5 years) and if they can keep costs and tuition inflation low, as well as boost completion rates across the board, then maybe we have a model to work with implementing in other states. However, I think it’s too early to say since we don’t have a full cohort of students to study from yet.
- many CC students are not looking to get degrees or transfer. Some students take selected courses for personal reasons. For example, someone who wants to learn another language may do so by taking the foreign language courses at a community college.
My immediate impression was that the Tennessee community college system is very small, so it doesn’t cost the state that much. California had free community college for years, but the California community college system is huge, and the state ultimately couldn’t afford it. California CCs are still relatively cheap, but the free community college experiment failed.
http://californiacommunitycolleges.cccco.edu/PolicyInAction/KeyFacts.aspx shows the history of California CC fees.
Increases tend to correspond to economic downturns (which lead to lower tax revenue to the state).
I do believe that community college should be free - and that, in the long term, so should university - but I’d like to think about a somewhat related issue.
Naturally, it’s a good idea to have a cheap path to education. But unlike a university education, the thing is that community college has never actually been expensive or unaffordable even for the poor. Where I live, the Pell grant alone covers the cost of CC and then some, and no one I have ever seen struggled to pay for community college. And they’re not bad CC’s - I would actually say that they are both affordable and some of the most effective at providing the kind of education they do.
The problem with CC is that it is not generally a sufficient education. Most of the CC programs are either simple mid-range jobs with a very constricted means for advancement (engineering tech, nursing, etc. where a bachelors is needed for any real career progression), or they are pre-university programs. It’s certainly not a bad idea to give people a chance to get mid-range jobs of course, but I feel that a lot of the reason people don’t particularly care for CC is because of the general stigma that it’s “university or bust” when it comes to getting a good quality job.
A bachelors degree is an awkward middle ground between the real levels of education that people need to get the job done. For people of standard ability, a bachelors degree covers a bit more than they will actually need because it’s a weird sort of compromise between “training standard students for whom it is the terminal degree” and “nurturing students who will pursue further education.” For highly skilled workers, “true entry level” is about equivalent to a masters degree.
I think that in addition to being free, a community college education (and trade school, and vocational education) should be expanded, perhaps into a 3 year degree, that is in fact sufficient for the purposes of getting people the kind of jobs that they would want with just a bachelors degree. That would get people to actually value CC and want to go there.
Two CC to attend in this area, but they are over an hour away. Since we are out of area, we would be paying higher rates to begin with. With poor/no bus service, we would need to buy a car, add kid to insurance, gas, etc. Expenses going up and up.
The good two year programs are highly competitive and difficult to get into. Took my frined’s daughter 5 years before she was able to get into the program she wanted.
Just going to pick up the gen eds and transferring into a 4 year program, the costs rise to the point that college becomes unaffordable again.
I think for the truly low income, it doesn’t get them where they really need to be.
Its just like healthcare. If it were yo be free there would be a shortage of doctors. There is a shortage as it is when people have to pay. Same will happen with college as well. Its not reasonable to expect they could have it, pay the teachers enough to keep classes going.
We already have a nearly free ‘free’ alternative - Khan academy, MIT courseware, and other MOOC type delivery systems. ‘Free’ college is just shifting more of the cost of education to the 50% of people who pay taxes. I like the state or county/parish approach best because the citizens of each locality can decide what works best for them. But to say it is a model that every state should follow is ludicrous.
Wow. I’d just be happy if most states stopped annually REDUCING the allocation they give community colleges, which result in budget cuts, layoffs, fewer classes, more adjunct faculty and HIGHER tuition.
My son has attended our community college - Palm Beach State - as a high school student dual enrolled. Friends sometimes wonder why we went that direction, but it’s been great for him. I have been very pleasantly surprised by the administrators, the facilities, some of the professors (like any school it’s a mixed bag there).
We have extended family in TN, so I’ve followed the TN model with interest. I think it’s a great start for TN students.
One thing I love that the Florida system does is to sync the community college course numbers with the state university system. It makes it easy to track degree requirements and see where you are.
Oregon Promise begins this fall. I’m curious to see how it goes. Community colleges here are already crowded. I’m also wondering if our state is underestimating the number of middle-high income families who will take advantage of it, quickly using up the money set aside for those students. The legislators believe that the majority of Oregon Promise recipients will be low income students who will qualify for federal aid, thereby reducing the state obligation. But I’m not so sure. I know that we will be utilizing Oregon Promise for our youngest BECAUSE we don’t qualify for aid. We already have one in college so any break we can get, we will take!
You can tell which school my DS currently attends. We moved from CA 2 years ago to TN. I am in my second year as a mentor for TN Achieves/Promise. The program began in Knox county and has spread to most counties in TN. There is continual “refining” of the program. This year I was not assigned mentor students until after they completed the FAFSA. I met my students this week. They will be required to complete 8 hours of community service before their first semester of Community College or Trade school. I like the fact that this program pays for students to learn a trade since not all people are college bound. Welding, truck driving, aircraft mechanics, nursing assistants, computer tech are all trades available at TN Colleges of Applied Technology (TCATs) eligible in the TN Achieves/Promise program.
They should spend more effort to fix the fact that even with free K-12 education, 15% don’t graduate with a HS diploma.
That should be a higher priority than helping those that are able to graduate from HS.
This is just widening the gap between the haves and the have nots. Those 15% just fall behind even more.
We already have free community college via our high school. There are approx 8 high schools that participate in a co-op and University High school at Ben Davis High School in Indiana. Tuition is free for anyone in the co-op of high schools. See http://www.wayne.k12.in.us/bduhs/.
High school students can get an associates degree while in high school and then transfer to university with their credits after high school. They also have technical courses like a certificate in automotive repair and paramedic. Since some these courses can be done in high school and most students meet prerequisites to enroll, I don’t see the point in paying for students to do this AFTER high school. Just like many students take AP college courses in high school, some students might be interested in taking career certificate courses in high school or in getting their associates degree.
The public school system needs to get their act together and offer this program in all cities. The only excuse for not having this type of program is if one lives in a rural area. We need more high schools with this program, not higher taxes where these kids start their career training after high school when they could start during high school.
Also of note is that the tax dollars follow the student to University High School and there is no surcharge for choosing this option from the neighboring school district. A nice side effect of this has been that our very middle class high school has been progressive about offering AP courses with the goal of enticing students and their tax dollars to stay within our school district.
BTW- our Indiana suburban school districts are able to do all this and our taxes have remained very, very low. This program makes sense for everyone.
@Roger_Dooley
I don’t agree with the free community college program because it can be offered within the scope of high school and paid for with tax dollars that are already set for high school. In those cases where a high school program can not be implemented (as in a rural area), I would consider supporting this idea.