Afton Partners

Community colleges receive minimal resources while serving a significant number of students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, according to a new report from The Century Foundation. While these institutions often focus on increasing access to higher education by offering financial aid, relatively few students earn certificates or degrees. Investing in resources like full-time faculty, smaller class sizes, tutoring and intensive advising services, as well as proven programs like first-year experiences and learning communities are more likely to increase graduation rates, the report explains. Current barriers to doing so include a lack of research on the true cost of a quality community college education, over-reliance on local funds and poor allocation of state funding.

Free college programs have continued to launch at the state and local level. And this election cycle, more candidates than ever are running on the idea. The free-college programs already enacted in states like Oregon, Tennessee and New York illustrate the extent to which state-funded programs are shaped by local circumstances. These and most other state-level programs are “last-dollar” models — the state covers whatever need is left unmet after a student exhausts their federal aid options, so much of those resources go to middle-class students, not the poor. Two recent reports from the Institute for Higher Education Policy and Ed Trust — both nonpartisan groups focused on equity in postsecondary education — reinforced concerns many already had about free college. Both reports found that tuition-free college programs often fail to meet the needs of the poorest students and overlook costs of attendance beyond tuition.

The University of Virginia plans to waive tuition for in-state students whose families earn less than $80,000 annually and have “typical assets” while students from families earning less than $30,000 annually would be eligible for free tuition and room and board, according to The Cavalier Daily, the student-run campus newspaper. The news came during the inaugural address of UVA’s new president, Jim Ryan, who said it was the first step in an effort to make the university easier to attend for first-generation and low- and middle-income students. UVA joins several other institutions, municipalities and states waiving tuition to help make higher education accessible to more students from a range of backgrounds as sticker prices rise.