A couple of years ago, the idea of free college for all students might have sounded like a pipe dream.
On Friday that idea is going to gain a lot more attention and legitimacy as President Obama highlights a statewide program in Tennessee that will cover community-college tuition for all of the state’s graduating high-school seniors.
The president is traveling to the Volunteer State as part of a three-state tour to highlight new policy proposals, just a few weeks before the annual State of the Union address. His first stop in Tennessee is scheduled to be at Pellissippi State Community College, near Knoxville, where he is widely expected to unveil a new higher-education initiative.
Details of the president’s agenda are sparse, but he will almost certainly be putting the spotlight on the Tennessee Promise, which starting this year will use lottery money to pay tuition for any high-school graduate to attend a two-year public college in the state. For several months, Obama-administration officials have been studying the pros and cons of free-college programs, said several higher-education experts.
It’s a heady moment for state higher-education officials, and advocates for the idea of free college are hoping that the president’s visit will push more states and local governments to consider similar approaches.
“The president is putting the Tennessee Promise on the national stage, and announcing whatever he’s going to announce is a tremendous boost to the momentum,” said Morley Winograd, who leads a nonprofit group that promotes similar programs across the country as well as a plan to provide federal grants to cover two years of college tuition for all students.
Early Success
For Mike Krause, the president’s visit is just the latest indication of the program’s success. Mr. Krause was appointed to lead the initiative by Gov. William E. Haslam, a Republican, who made the Tennessee Promise the centerpiece of his 2014 legislative agenda.
Nearly 90 percent of the state’s estimated 65,000 high-school seniors have applied to the program—more than double the initial expectations—including many students who may not have previously considered going to college, Mr. Krause said.
“In what state have you ensured that every single senior had a conversation about going to college?” said Mr. Krause.
Most encouraging, Mr. Krause said, was that 23 percent of the applicants were African-American students, six percentage points higher than the proportion of black students in the state’s college enrollment. The proportion of Hispanic applicants to the Promise program is also higher than their representation among college students, he said.
In addition, men and women are split evenly among the applicants, Mr. Krause said, while men make up just 40 percent of college students in the state.
Of course, not all 58,000 Promise applicants are expected to attend a community or technical college in the fall. Mr. Krause said he expects 12,000 to 16,000 to enroll. About 20 percent of them will be students who were not expected to attend a two-year college, he said, and about a third of that smaller cohort will be students who would not have gone to college at all.
That’s enough to move the college-going rate a few percentage points, he said, and eventually help the state meet the governor’s goal of having 55 percent of residents with a college degree.
Concerns About Who Benefits
While many in higher education have praised Tennessee’s effort, there have also been many questions raised about whether the program will help students who really need financial aid and if it will lead to more college degrees.
An analysis last year by Bryce McKibben, then a policy researcher for the Association of Community College Trustees, argued that middle- and upper-income students would benefit most from the program, while low-income students who are eligible for federal Pell Grants would get no state money. The state’s contribution kicks in only as a “last dollar,” after other financial aid has been applied, and the maximum Pell Grant would more than cover the average tuition at a community college in Tennessee, Mr. McKibben wrote in the analysis, published on the website Medium in August.
At the same time, the lower-income students may not be able to afford the additional expenses of attending college, such as books or even living costs, he wrote.
Mr. McKibben is now a policy adviser to Democrats on the U.S. Senate’s education committee. He declined to comment for this article.
Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of educational-policy studies and sociology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, agrees that helping low-income students cover the extra costs of college is a key to ensuring that they are able to finish their degrees. That could be accomplished by making work-study jobs available to those students or through no-interest loans from the state.
That was one of the recommendations that Ms. Goldrick-Rab made in a paper, written with Nancy Kendall, a colleague at Madison, proposing to reallocate some federal money to pay two years of tuition for all students at two- and four-year public colleges.
The paper’s other recommendations include ensuring that state and local governments maintain operating support for the colleges and providing regular financial advising to all students.
Even with her concerns, Ms. Goldrick-Rab said the Tennessee program sends a powerful message to students that attending college may be possible, in particular the neediest students who will apply and find out that they qualify for federal aid. (A requirement of the Promise is that students fill out the Free Application for Federal Student Aid.)
Students in middle-income groups may also be encouraged to attend college—those whose families earn too much to qualify for Pell Grants but who won’t get enough financial aid from a four-year college, Ms. Goldrick-Rab said.
Mr. Krause said the program has other characteristics that will lead to higher completion rates, including requirements for students to meet with volunteer mentors and to enroll full time. In addition, he said, Tennessee is one of 34 states that have agreed to follow the policy proposals of Complete College America, a nonprofit group promoting improvements in college-completion rates.
“I’m all about completion,” Mr. Krause said, “but you don’t get more degrees until you get more kids going to college.”
Questions about the program’s success also haven’t diminished the president’s interest. Governor Haslam and the Tennessee Promise were featured at the White House’s recent summit on college access and affordability.
Mr. Winograd, who founded the Campaign for Free College Tuition, said even with the likelihood of Congressional inaction on anything Mr. Obama proposes, his support could make the idea acceptable: “It’s got to be on his agenda to spark some further progress in the states.”
Eric Kelderman writes about money and accountability in higher education, including such areas as state policy, accreditation, and legal affairs.You can find him on Twitter @etkeld, or email him at eric.kelderman@chronicle.com.
