Free community college would polish 'an unrecognized diamond' but be 'complicated to put in place'

Aarthi Swaminathan
·Reporter
·2 min read
29

The White House unveiled a new $1.8 trillion spending and tax plan that includes a sizable investment in education led by "two years of free community college to all Americans."

"Community colleges have long been a little bit of an unrecognized diamond along the education continuum," former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said in a call hosted by Invest in America ahead of the Joint Session of Congress where the president will present the plan on Wednesday night. "And whether it's 18-year-olds or 38-year-olds or 58-year-olds going back to retrain and retool, our community colleges aren't just places of learning, they are literally when they're at their best ... economic engines for their communities and for the regions."

There are roughly 1,000 public two-year colleges in the U.S. with more than 8 million students.

The plan proposes $109 billion to fund the free community college initiative, $85 billion from Pell Grants to make college more affordable for lower- and middle-income students, and $46 billion in investment for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Tribal Colleges and Universities (TCUs), and other minority-serving institutions (MSIs).

New America's Kevin Carey, a higher education expert, noted that any federal initiative approved by Congress to make community college free of charge would be very difficult to implement given the nuances across U.S. states.

"What’s clear is that free college is easy to describe and complicated to put in place," Carey wrote in a New York Times op-ed. "For millions of students nationwide, whether college is truly free will depend on the choices Congress makes."

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), along with colleagues including House Education & Labor Committee, and Committee Chairman Bobby Scott (D-VA), recently re-introduced the America’s College Promise Act to provide two years of tuition-free access to community or technical college programs and more.

“I’m so glad to see that President Biden understands that in order to build back an economy that works for everyone, we need to ensure all students can get the education and skills they need succeed," Sen. Murray, a former community college teacher who is currently chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, said in a statement. "Providing free community college is a bold first step to make college more affordable and provide students pathways to higher education and workforce training without debt."

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Aarthi is a reporter for Yahoo Finance. She can be reached at aarthi@yahoofinance.com. Follow her on Twitter @aarthiswami.

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