Oregon’s free community college initiative won’t start for a few more months, but college presidents have already warned about problems that could prevent its success.
Some want the state to do more by expanding the number of student who qualifies and, with it, greater funding, according to Inside Higher Ed.
Offering free college isn’t a bad idea, the argument goes. Instead, the state needs to devote even more funding to higher education.
“To call it free college is more of a misnomer, because not everyone is eligible for it and not everyone will receive free tuition,” Camille Preus, president of Blue Mountain Community College, told Inside Higher Ed.
That’s a stretch, as the Oregon program offers any student who maintains a 2.5 GPA free tuition. College costs go beyond tuition and includes fees, textbooks, and living costs, but offering every student interested in a degree money for 100 percent of their living costs would be impractical, even by state government financial standards.
When the program passed, it was expected to attract 10,000 new students to community colleges and the state devoted $10 million to the initiative.
“Requested changes include opening the program up by lowering the GPA requirement, expanding beyond recent high school graduates and GED recipients, and providing more resources to the community colleges,” Ashley A. Smith wrote, but those changes could exacerbate the problem.
With looser requirements and more funding, it could be a waste of resources, ineffective in improving the lives of students.
In a 2015 audit by Oregon’s secretary of state, only 24 percent of community college students earned a degree or certificate within seven years, according to the Salem Statesman Journal. That’s below the national average of 30 percent. Paying the way for more students, with lower GPAs, could result in students floating around the college, but not earning a degree and developing skills. They would be better off working, going to a better school, or using their time more productively.
More accessibility might sound democratic, but in practice, it hasn’t paid off for the average community college student who, it is assumed, wants a certificate or degree from enrolling.
Until the community college system improves, it’s questionable whether free college initiatives can better the career options for the average student. States would be wise to develop a model for improving community colleges before pushing more students into them.
“The state and its two-year colleges will study whether students who wouldn’t otherwise have attended college are now doing so because of the Promise, as well as whether or not it’s helping minority and low-income students,” Smith noted.
Oregon doesn’t plan to allocate the money without a review of its effects. That seems backward, however. Kicking $10 million to colleges without requiring prior effort is not a promising avenue to success. Inside Higher Ed noted that $3.1 million has already been spent to “hire more academic advisers” and “help the college improve student success and completion.” Whether more bureaucrats and vague words and improving graduation rates will lead to actual improvement is yet to be seen.
For Oregonians, though, their politicians have already dedicated $10 million on the experiment. Now, all they can hope for is marginal improvement.
