Does free community college work? An experiment in Chicago suggests that the answer is yes.
Two
years ago, under a program called the Star Scholarship, Chicago began
to offer free community college to all public high school graduates who
earned a B average or higher and demonstrated near college-level
proficiency in their work.
To keep costs for students low, they also get
their textbooks free.
Since
the program was created by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, roughly 1,000 students a
year — about 5 percent of each Chicago Public Schools graduating class —
have claimed their reward. This fall, more than 2,900 of these students
are attending the City Colleges of Chicago, the city’s community
college system, which has roughly 90,000 students.
Most
of the Star Scholars are pursuing an associate degree so that they can
transfer to a four-year college, but they can also earn certification in
various fields along the way and head right into the work force if they
choose. Attending either full or part-time, they have up to three years
to use the scholarship.
The
early results of this initiative have been incredibly encouraging.
Two-thirds of the 890 Star Scholars who started in the fall of 2015 have
either graduated or are currently enrolled with enough credits so that
they are on course to complete their degree within three years, the
federal benchmark for associate degree completion.
In
fact, the percentage of students who graduated in two years (22
percent) is nearly the same as the national community college three-year
graduation rate and the retention rate of these students after the
first year (85 percent) was close to twice the national average for
community college students.
This
success is especially remarkable at the community college level, where
the challenge of improving retention and graduation rates is just as
pressing as the challenge of enhancing affordability.
Among
the more than 200 students who have graduated already, more than
two-thirds were the first in their families to go to college, more than
90 percent were members of minority groups and more than 60 percent were
female.
To
our knowledge, this is also the only public scholarship in the country
open to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the country as
children.
These
are students like Arturo, a son of Mexican immigrants. He attended a
large public high school on Chicago’s Northwest Side, where his
intellectual curiosity was piqued by computer science classes. Arturo
says that without the Star Scholarship he would probably still be in the
early stages of his community college career because he would have
spent much of his time working a minimum-wage job to afford even the
low-tuition cost.
Instead,
Arturo graduated in two years this past May, and was awarded an
additional scholarship from the CME Group, which operates financial
exchanges. CME also helped arrange a paid summer internship for him at a
financial trading firm. Arturo is now a junior at the state’s four-year
public university campus in Chicago, studying to become a software
engineer.
A
focus on merit has been a guiding principle of the Star program. This
helps keep the premise simple: if students work hard, they can go to
community college free. And as with Arturo, that opportunity can extend
beyond community college.
More
than half of the first graduating class was accepted at one or more of
City Colleges’ 20 four-year college partners, all of which have agreed
to offer discounted tuition. For students who qualify for the program,
this means that they can earn a four-year degree for essentially the
cost of a year and a half of college, as long as they study hard from
high school through community college.
During
the 2016 election campaign, both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton
proposed plans that would free Americans from the enormous cost of
college, which have put so many students into debt — and kept upward
mobility out of reach. But no legislation has passed on the national
stage, and none is expected.
In
the laboratories of the cities and the states, though — in New York,
Oregon, Rhode Island, Indiana, Montana, Minnesota, Kentucky, Nevada,
Washington and Arkansas, as well as Detroit, Pittsburgh, New Haven,
Kalamazoo, Mich., Oakland, Calif., and Tulsa, Okla. — local governments
have created or are considering plans to cover tuition for a select
number of students or to greatly reduce the cost of college tuition.
Among
the states, perhaps Tennessee has gone the farthest, offering two years
of tuition-free community college for all high school graduates.
City
Colleges picks up the cost after all other forms of financial aid has
been applied. Chicago’s plan funds the scholarship with general
operating funds from property taxes. Historically strong reserves have
enabled City Colleges to make this commitment, and an endowment is being
created as we find more efficient ways of running our programs and sell
underutilized assets.
Recognizing
that a high school diploma is no longer sufficient for success, the
Star Scholarship program is part of a broader initiative afoot in
Chicago to create a seamless “K to 14” system. Earlier this year, Mayor
Emanuel announced an effort to ensure that all Chicago public high
school students graduate with a plan for what they will do after high
school, whether it is going to a four-year or two-year college, a job,
the military, an internship or something else.
The
city is also engaging high school students with college-level work as
soon as they are ready by offering free college courses. Chicago’s dual
enrollment-dual credit program, with high school students taking free
college classes, has grown more than tenfold since 2011, serving more
than 4,000 students last year. More than 200 high school students
graduated last spring with a full semester of college credit this way.
It
is no coincidence that the vast majority of Star graduates this year
were among the cohort of students who earned college credit while still
in high school. Students not only save money, they also earn the
confidence that they can succeed in college-level courses. A well-earned
sense of self-assurance is another reason our retention rates are so
high.
What
we have seen in Chicago is that when the entire community wraps its
arms around students who are willing to work hard, the dream of a
college education does not have to be accompanied by the nightmare of a
sea of debt.
America
decided in the early 20th century that high school was the baseline of
free public education. In the early 21st century, a postsecondary
credential is the new requirement for a family-sustaining career. To
help our students meet this higher educational bar, we must create
educational programs that reflect that new reality.
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