Community College: 'Free to Anyone Who's Willing to Work for It'

President Obama proposed last week to make the first two years of study at the nation’s community colleges “free to anyone who’s willing to work for it.” In effect, community college would be as universal as taxpayer-funded K-12 public schools.

If America’s College Promise is adopted, 9 million people across the United States could save on average $3,800 in college costs, according to the administration. The benefit would most likely be felt among the middle-class students, according to policy experts. And people of any age would be eligible as long as they maintained a 2.5 grade point average. The plan would not cover housing, fees, books and transportation costs.

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“Two years of college should be free and should be universal and should be of high quality for responsible students, just like high school is today,” said Ted Mitchell, under secretary of education, after the president’s announcement last Friday.

The Republican-controlled Congress is unlikely to embrace this idea, estimated to cost about $6 billion a year. The nation’s federal budget is $3.5 trillion. Even if the president cannot get this proposal enacted into law, he believes leaders throughout the country will be inspired to think along similar lines.

“When you’re constrained by a Congress that won’t pass anything because you proposed it, you have to use your executive authority as much as you can. And you’re in a situation where you are trying to seed the ground with good ideas and hopefully those ideas spread and other people take them up,” former White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

Some Republicans have said this is an idea best left to the states. Tennessee’s Republican governor has enacted such a plan, and Obama’s program is modeled in part on Tennessee’s.

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