Obama proposes free two yr Community College Education for all......great Idea

[franksterr]

I heard that is how it was back in day but then when blacks got Civil Rights the racist among us began to move to have blacks upward mobility curtailed and or slow by putting college education financially out of the reach of most blacks.

It now seems Obama "Fabian Agenda" of making changes from within slowly and incrementally that benefits all is working to benefit us all......
Is It Too Little Too Late?
Or
Better Late Than Never?
Better Sump'em Than Nutt'em?

President Obama made a pitch for a free, two-year community college education for any American who wants it, telling an audience in Tennessee on Friday that a college education should be "as free and universal as high school is today."
"America thrived in the 20th century in large part because we made a high school education the norm, and then we sent a generation to college on the GI Bill," Obama said at Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville, Tenn.
"But eventually, the world caught on. The world caught up. And that's why we need to lead the world in education again," he said.
Obama proposed a state and federal partnership to provide an associate's degree — or two years toward a bachelor's degree, or job training — at all of America's 1,100 community colleges. He said the proposal would be one of the most important elements in his State of the Union Address on Jan. 20.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2015/01/09/obama-free-community-college-tennessee-speech/21504849/

[Xavier]

The one thing I always liked about the US was the accessibility to a college education regardless of "so called intellect". Over the years it has become less accessible because of the cost. I like the idea but awaiting the details of how it will be funded.

[kia027]

In NY back in the day all City Colleges were free until the 1970s fiscal crisis. Not sure of other colleges around the nation.

I think free community college to all is a good thing but considering high schools have been dumbed down over the years, community college is similar to the last few years of high school. Tertiary education in the US is to be commended. Secondary and Primary education needs some more work

[blugiant]

In NY back in the day all City Colleges were free until the 1970s fiscal crisis. Not sure of other colleges around the nation.

I think free community college to all is a good thing but considering high schools have been dumbed down over the years, community college is similar to the last few years of high school. Tertiary education in the US is to be commended. Secondary and Primary education needs some more work

kia chatt de trooth wen more blakks tarted fe go to cuny and suny dem decided fe end free tuition

y mixxed race man decided fe proposed diss wen republikkan tekk ova congress

politrixx ting

[Xavier]

In NY back in the day all City Colleges were free until the 1970s fiscal crisis. Not sure of other colleges around the nation.

I think free community college to all is a good thing but considering high schools have been dumbed down over the years, community college is similar to the last few years of high school. Tertiary education in the US is to be commended. Secondary and Primary education needs some more work

I agree. My daughter did dual enrollment at a community college the last year of high school. She said that community college was easier that high school. I just finished reading "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell and it really opened my eyes up to why the students in the rest of the world are "winning". One of the things mentioned is the time spent in school learning.

[My Looh]

Great idea! But nothing is "FREE".

It's like people talk about Canada's "FREE" health care system. I love the system, but it not "FREE".

Somebody has got to pay for it.


With that said, the only way to lift people out of poverty is to make education accessible to everyone. So on that merit alone the idea is a worthy one.

The middle class will complain because the cost may largely be picked up by them but in the long term, more people educated = more people working = more tax revenue collected = less strain on the middle class.

Short tem pain for long term gain!

[Peasie]

This is a win-win situation for Obama and students, of course. Presidents Bush, Clinton, Reagan have long supported community colleges by increasing their funding.

http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/01/09/obamas-predecessors-also-loved-community-colleges/

[kia027]

I agree. My daughter did dual enrollment at a community college the last year of high school. She said that community college was easier that high school. I just finished reading "Outliers: The Story of Success" by Malcolm Gladwell and it really opened my eyes up to why the students in the rest of the world are "winning". One of the things mentioned is the time spent in school learning.

Refresh my memory what does the book say about time spent learning? Is it the summer gap issue?

[Gen]

yes on average students are taking 4-6 years to graduate from a community college. Understandable, since the student pop is mainly working adults, with a few traditional kids looking for college credits before moving on to freshman Undergrad.

and of course who will be paying for it, since TANSTAAFL ?

NYT profiled one of the colleges in nyc here, I think it has the largest student pop. Students (HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES) can barely pass some of the remedial courses, even though they are already dumbed down.

not everybody can manage or ready fi college video light

[Xavier]

Refresh my memory what does the book say about time spent learning? Is it the summer gap issue?

Yes it talks about the summer gap and learning. It also talked about the opportunity that middle and upper income children gain during summer because they are doing things that help build their reading skills because of the access they have.

[Tropicana]

They have had this in the Province of Quebec since the 1970s. They are called CEGEPs. They are junior colleges. You have to apply and qualify but tuition is free.

[Gen]

much of what is being proposed is already in place at least here in nyc. if the student fails the remedial pre-requisite, he or she cannot proceed to the first required course in the program, so they repeat the remedial courses 3, 4 and 5 times. these remedial non-credit courses are not offered free, and eats into the student's grant package. the grants were usually issued for a specific number of semesters.




Obama would have Washington pay three-quarters of the tuition for two-year college students without regard to financial need.
States would have to pick up the rest. Students would have to attend at least half time and keep a grade point average at 2.5 or better. Schools would have to meet performance standards
.
At a time when only 20% of community college students graduate within three years, Obama’s proposal has two aims: make it easier for students to succeed by relieving financial pressure, and raise the quality of the education.
But there’s a wide gap between the President’s methods and his goals.

With tuitions averaging $3,800 annually nationwide, community colleges are readily affordable for well-off families. As for poor kids, financial aid already covers much of the cost.

Look at CUNY, which serves some 90,000 students at seven community colleges.

To help students pay the $4,500-a-year tuition, New York offers grants of up to $5,165 through the Tuition Assistance Program. On top of that, federal Pell Grants of up to $5,730 can cover tuition and costs such as textbooks and transportation. As a result, 70% of CUNY’s community college students effectively pay nothing to attend.

Still, only 15% finish degrees in three years — partly because three-quarters of students arrive at CUNY ill-prepared for college.
A program called ASAP points to a better way. It serves more than 4,000 students who have committed to full-time attendance. They get free tuition and MetroCards, attend many classes with fellow ASAP participants and receive intensive guidance. Fully 57% graduate within three years.

But CUNY’s expenses per student, normally $9,800, rise to $13,700 for ASAP. New York City absorbs most of the extra cost.
This is where Obama could put additional federal dollars to effective use:

Forget free tuition for students who can pay their own way. Keep Pell Grants for those who need them. Then, give CUNY and other community colleges federal money to enroll more kids in ASAP-like programs — and put them on the path to actually completing their education

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/editorial-new-college-article-1.2081915

[Tropicana]

In Quebec CEGEP tuiition was also been free without regard to financial need. Not sure if it still is.

[j-kid]

October 16, 2014


By

Paul Fain


The concept of tuition-free community college is picking up steam. Chicago this month followed Tennessee with the creation of a new community-college scholarship for high school graduates.
Meanwhile, student demand in Tennessee has been enormous. The Tennessean, a Nashville newspaper, reported that in just two months 35,000 high school seniors have applied to the program, which is called the Tennessee Promise. The state appears likely to double its original estimate of 20,000 applications.
“We are going to get a lot of new people,” said Karen Bowyer, president of Dyersburg State Community College.
Despite the enthusiasm, the “free” community college plans have critics.
The scholarships do not cover most living expenses, they have said, such as for transportation or day care. Some of the money also will go to students who can afford to pay for tuition.
In addition, Chicago’s Star Scholarship has drawn fire for its eligibility requirements, which critics said look like merit aid.
The scholarship was jointly announced by Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s mayor, and Cheryl Hyman, chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago. Students must have a high-school GPA of 3.0 and need no remediation in math or English to qualify.
Only an estimated 3,000 of the city’s roughly 20,000 high school graduates would qualify. A spokeswoman for City Colleges said the annual estimated cost of the scholarship is $2 million, which would easily be covered by the $10 million the system saved through consolidations and cuts in its capital plan.
(All Tennessee high school graduates may apply for the Tennessee Promise. But they must enroll full-time and maintain a 2.0 GPA.)
Even so, free-tuition plans send a powerful positive message to lower-income students, said several experts, including those who are skeptical about some details of the scholarships. That’s because the full-court blitz of saying “college is for you” might bring in more students who otherwise would have passed on higher education.
Take the “last-dollar” scholarship complaint, which refers to the fact that the plans pay only for tuition and fees that federal and state grant aid fail to covers. The maximum Pell Grant of $5,645 is more than the annual tuition charged by both Tennessee’s two-year colleges and the City Colleges of Chicago. That means relatively little scholarship money might go to lower-income students.
Yet students need to pursue federal aid eligibility to get it. And they must first fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), which has been bashed widely for being too complicated. Needier students typically also lack the family and peer support to navigate financial aid forms.
That’s where scholarship programs like Tennessee’s can come in.
Tennessee Promise
Applications so far: 35,000+
Original goal: 20,000
Estimated enrollment with scholarship: 12,000
TN high school graduates last year: 63,133
Total enrollment in two-year colleges: 102,483

“We think there are a lot of lower-income students who don’t know the financial aid resources that are available to them,” said Mike Krause, the Tennessee Promise’s executive director. By telling high-school students that their college tuition will be covered -- in clear and simple language -- Krause said, “you get them to the table.”
The program also includes a broad range of supports for its award recipients. Before students enroll next fall, they will be assigned to a mentor. So far 5,000 of the needed 6,000 mentors have been recruited. Company employees, retirees and college staff have signed up, among others.
Students also will be required to attend two on-campus orientation events this spring, which Krause said will be designed to help first-generation college students. They must also complete eight hours of community service.
The orientations will seek to reduce students’ anxiety, Krause said, by answering questions like, “What is a bursar?”
That sort of one-on-one guidance for incoming students is common at selective colleges, but rare at cash-strapped community colleges. And the Tennessee Promise gets high school students in the enrollment pipeline a full year out, which is also unusual because many new community college students register just weeks or even days before courses start.
Krause said many high school guidance counselors around the state are on board and working with students on how to attend community college. All those factors should go a long way to helping students avoid snags with financial aid.
Bowyer said she’s already seeing it happen at her college. Prospective students and their parents have been on campus for events like the statewide “Scholarship Saturday” in September.
“They’ve never gone through the FAFSA,” she said of many families, but they are getting help with it now.
The Tennessee Promise builds on a similar private scholarship program, tnAchieves, which has been offered around much of the state for years. The program also includes a heavy dose of student supports, including mentors.
“They get the message,” said Bowyer of tnAchieves’ scholarship recipients. “There are a lot of people helping these young people.”
Free and Merit-Based?
Robert Kelchen is one of the skeptics. Kelchen, an assistant professor in Seton Hall University’s department of education leadership, management and policy, recently wrote about several possible problems with free community college policies, pointing in particular at how they might fail to help lower-income students.
Yet Kelchen agreed that the programs’ symbolic value could be substantial. For example, he pointed to research finding that students who received help with their FAFSA, as well as information about financial aid options, were more likely to enroll in college and to receive more aid money.
As a result, Kelchen said, officials in Tennessee might be able to make good on their bet that more students will pursue federal aid because of the scholarship.
“I hope they’re right,” he said.
The eligibility requirements of Chicago’s scholarship are a tougher sell to higher education experts.
Evelyn N. Waiwaiole, director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin, compared those criteria to that of Georgia’s HOPE scholarship, which has controversial merit elements.
Tuition-free community college scholarships “are created with good intentions,” she said via email. “But we have to ask -- who really wins?”
Tom Bailey also is skeptical about free-tuition plans. Bailey, who directs the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, wonders if the programs will be accompanied by steep tuition hikes or by taking state support away from colleges. (That hasn’t happened in Tennessee or Chicago, at least yet.)
Yet Bailey notes that the scholarships in Tennessee and Chicago are part of wider-ranging campaigns.
Since 2010 City Colleges of Chicago have been working on a “reinvention” that seeks to improve student success and institutional efficiency. At the project’s core is an attempt to graduate more students. And it’s working: the system has nearly doubled both the number of degrees awarded and its formerly abysmal graduation rate, which is up to 13 percent from 7 percent.
Bailey said the Chicago scholarship is in the “spirit of reform,” and could help build momentum for the colleges’ promising work on student success.
Big Numbers
Bill Haslam, Tennessee’s Republican governor, has made the Tennessee Promise the cornerstone of his ambitious college completion push for the state.
To put the 35,000 applications for the scholarship in context, Tennessee had 63,000 high school graduates last year. Its 13 community colleges and 27 colleges of applied technology enroll 99,000 students, a small portion of whom are first-time, full-time students like those who might attend under the scholarship program.
State officials are sticking to their original high-end estimate of 12,000 students who actually will attend community college as part of the Tennessee Promise.
Many students have applied as an insurance policy, in case they don’t get into a four-year institution.
Entire senior classes have signed up at some Tennessee high schools. Many of those who don’t end up taking advantage of the scholarship will enroll in Tennessee’s four-year institutions. That’s obviously not a bad thing, state officials said. And some among those eventual 12,000 students would have enrolled in community colleges anyhow.
Yet the expected influx from the Tennessee Promise will make a difference -- a big one.
“We’re going to have enough students show up that the college-going rate in Tennessee changes,” said Krause.High school students line up at a Tennessee Promise event at Motlow State Community College
The state’s two-year colleges should be able to handle the bump in students, said Krause and others. Enrollment at Tennessee community colleges has been falling after a multiyear post-recession bump. It dropped by more than 4 percent last year, after a similar decline last year.
Dyersburg is ready, said Bowyer. Like other two-year institutions in Tennessee, the college has benefited from generous state funding for facilities in recent years. (Operational support did not go up during this tight budget year, however, despite Gov. Haslam’s request for more money.) Dyersburg has 188 square feet of facility space per full-time-equivalent student, which is among the roomiest in the state.
Despite the flood of applications, the Tennessee Promise’s leaders are pushing hard for more before the application deadline of Nov. 1.
Krause has logged thousands of miles while crisscrossing the state to visit high schools and promote the scholarship. When reached this week he was headed to Jackson State Community College for a sign-up event.
The plan is to “hit every corner of the state,” he said, “and make sure every student has an opportunity.”

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/10/16/chicago-joins-tennessee-tuition-free-community-college-plan

[lonewolf]

Obama thinks he is still on the campaign trail. His feel good speeches stating unaffordable programs are nothing but lip service. Don't take the bait. This is more politics at play. This will be dead on arrival when it gets to the floor of house and senate...and Dems can point blame at Repubs. It's simply a rediculous unaffordable program, especially for the states, not to mention the federal expense...The unconvienent truth is that the US government needs to stop spending money that they don't have and start attacking US debt.

I have a novel approach to this education problem....plan ahead for a child's education. Children are expensive, if people can't afford them, don't have them. Why do folks expect others to pay for their responsibilities?

And, college education today is a joke...college institutions and professors get rich off of an education system that hands out worthless degrees. There are many unemployed college educated people in the market place that cannot find jobs and they are saddled with unpayable debt from college loans.

I say bring back the vocational tech schools. Start in high school with vo-tech training. Plumbers, electricians, HVAC training etc. Apprentice programs such as these will give children real world jobs, respect and a successful carreer...not to mention good money making skills.