By Katherine Mangan
[Updated (1/9/2015, 6:45 a.m.) to include new details from a statement by the Institute for College Access and Success.]Millions of students nationwide could be eligible for two years of free community-college tuition under a proposal that President Obama will outline on Friday during an appearance at Pellissippi State Community College, in Tennessee.
The proposal, which would require approval by the Republican-controlled Congress and would carry an unspecified price tag, calls for the federal government to pick up the tab for about three-quarters of students’ tuition costs. Participating states would kick in the rest, and if all of them joined in, about nine million students could benefit each year, with full-time students saving an average of $3,800 in tuition per year.
The America’s College Promise plan, as the proposal has been dubbed, is modeled after the Tennessee Promise, a program that will use lottery money to cover community-college tuition for all of that state’s high-school seniors, starting this fall. Nine out of 10 of Tennessee’s graduating seniors have applied to the program—more than twice as many as initially expected. State officials predict that 12,000 to 16,000 of them will end up enrolling in two-year colleges.
More>>
