What One State Learned After a Decade of Free Community College
The free community college movement effectively began in 2014 when Republican Gov. Bill Haslam of Tennessee signed the Tennessee Promise Scholarship Act, which offered the state’s high school graduates free tuition to attend any two-year public community college or technical college in Tennessee.
Communities around the country had been experimenting with free college programs since 2005, usually with private funding, but Tennessee was the first to make it a statewide policy, and it inspired 36 states to follow suit. This year, Massachusetts was the most recent to make community college free. (Here is a search tool for all the free college programs, including more than 400 local ones.)
But as free-tuition programs have multiplied, so have questions and doubts. Are low-income students benefiting? Is free tuition leading to more college graduates?
