Free Community College

Community college isn't free. Someone has to pay for it.

When I first went to Santa Ana College in 1979, I paid just $5.00 for the health fee, plus whatever nominal cost for books.

But, while the cost of college was virtually free to me, the student, it's the taxpayers who finance the education, because it costs a lot of money to pay for all the teachers, bricks and mortar, and all the other expenses. And in fact, I'm not against free community college. If the state promises to provide public education for all who might profit from it, at public expense, then the state should keep its promise. California and other states haven't kept their promise for free community college for decades. But they haven't renounced the promise.

Indeed, President Obama has been campaigning for free community college for some time now, and yesterday the White House released a new report on the initiative, "America’s College Promise: Progress Report on Free Community College."

Long Beach City College is cited at the report:

Long Beach College Promise: Long Beach City College (LBCC), California StateUniversity-Long Beach (CSULB), Long Beach Unified School District (LBUSD) and the City of Long Beach have collaborated to provide a free semester of tuition to all localhigh school graduates, with guaranteed transfer admission to CSULB for those interested in completing a bachelor’s degree program. To date, the program has provided a free semester for more than 7,000 local students. This month the Long Beach College Promise will announce that it will extend the free tuition scholarship to one full academic year at LBCC. The success of the program has become a model for other California schools. In 2013, Cuesta College announced that it would eliminate the first semester of tuition for incoming San Luis Obispo County students.

Plus, lots about this in the news.

At the Washington Post, "Obama on free community colleges: 'This isn't rocket science'."

And at the PBS News Hour, "The free community college experiment everyone is watching."

But see Reason, "Obama's Grandiose Plan Will Give Community College Administrators the Last Laugh at Our Expense," and the Daily Signal, "Five Caveats to Obama’s ‘Free’ Community College Proposal."