MESSAGE
| DATE | 2017-04-09 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout of NYLXS] Free Schools?
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New York Adopts Free Tuition
SUNY and CUNY students from families with incomes up to $125,000 will
not pay tuition. But some aid experts are alarmed by requirement that
graduates stay in state for same number of years they receive the benefit.
By Scott Jaschik
April 8, 2017
38 COMMENTS

Governor Andrew Cuomo announces his plan for free tuition.

In what proponents are calling a historic move, New York Governor Andrew
Cuomo and state legislative leaders announced a deal Saturday that will
make tuition free at the City University of New York and State
University of New York Systems -- for both community colleges and
four-year colleges and universities -- for families with annual incomes
up to $125,000. The plan will be phased in over three years, starting
this fall with new enrollees from families with incomes up to $100,000.
The governor's office estimates that nearly 940,000 families in New York
State will be eligible for free public college tuition when the plan is
fully phased in.
The announcement from the governor also noted a "generous maintenance of
effort" provision to protect SUNY and CUNY budgets. The provision is
designed to address the fear of some educators that free tuition could
reduce the pressure to provide adequate budgets to public higher education.
At the same time, a last-minute addition to the bill is alarming some
student aid experts, including advocates for free public college
tuition. The agreement requires those who receive free tuition to live
and work in the state for the same number of years that they receive the
awards. If they do not, the scholarships would convert to student loans.
The requirement may be deferred if recipients leave the state to
complete their undergraduate education, to enroll in graduate school or
because of "extreme hardship."
The budget deal also contains two other measures related to college
affordability:
$8 million will be provided for promoting and distributing open
educational resources (free online education materials) for SUNY and
CUNY students. The systems have been urged to focus on high-enrollment
courses, with the goal of minimizing or eliminating textbook costs for
those courses.
A new grant program will be created for students who attend private
colleges in the state, with a maximum award of $3,000. However, private
colleges would be required to match the grants, and to freeze tuition
for the duration of a student's grant.
Revival of Free Tuition and the Public-Private Split
The action in New York represents a revival of the free tuition concept
-- which featured prominently in the presidential campaigns of Bernie
Sanders and Hillary Clinton last year and then was widely seen as dead
after Donald Trump defeated Clinton in November. But Cuomo -- with
Sanders at his side -- proposed a version of the plan in January and
fought hard for it in negotiations with legislative leaders. Sanders,
meanwhile, has also introduced a new version of his free-tuition plan in
the U.S. Senate.
Cuomo also battled against private colleges in New York State, most of
which opposed the plan. Many New York private colleges largely enroll
state residents, and some of these colleges' leaders have feared a loss
of enrollment to the SUNY and CUNY systems. Generally, the plan was a
tougher sell for Cuomo in the Senate than in the Assembly. But major
legislative initiatives in New York tend to be adopted or rejected as
part of the overall state budget -- and in this case the Cuomo proposal
made it into the final deal.
Many private college leaders opposed the Clinton and Sanders
free-tuition plans, and a similar split played out in New York.
On Saturday, as college leaders studied the legislative language,
reactions split between public and private institutions.
Gail Mellow, president of LaGuardia Community College of the City
University of New York, said she thought the new policy was
"extraordinary" and would lead to dramatic shifts in college attendance
in the state. She said too many in New York and elsewhere "have blown
through their aid attending for-profit schools and leaving without
skills." The free-tuition model will "change the discussion" in the
state and attract many more students to community college, she believes.
"This is going to change the college-going culture," she said, "by
taking tuition off the table."
Nancy Zimpher, chancellor of the State University of New York, said she
too expects the greatest impact at community colleges, which the vast
majority of students attend without room and board costs. But she said
that New York State had also changed the free-tuition discussion by
including four-year public institutions.
"We may be on the precipice" of a new era, of promoting the idea that
many more people need a four-year education than have earned bachelor's
degrees in the past, and this would be a historic shift, she said.
Zimpher also noted that the bill includes requirements that students
enroll full time and maintain minimum grade point averages. This will
"move the completion dial," she said.
But for Mary Beth Labate, president of the Commission on Independent
Colleges and Universities in New York, the news was "dispiriting."
"There is a clear divide in the way students will be treated, depending
on whether they go to a public or private institution," she said, adding
that the Cuomo plan is poor public policy, given the excellent outcomes
for those who attend private colleges.
As to the new funds for private college students, Labate said she wasn't
sure that many institutions would find the program viable. She said the
requirement that colleges freeze tuition for students when they first
receive the aid would appear to mean colleges would end up with
different tuition rates for students in different classes, and would
have to track the students.
"This would be bureaucratically difficult," she said. "Colleges would
have to ask if it was worth it."
The Requirement to Stay in the State
As news of the budget deal spread, one provision drew criticism from
advocates for free public higher education. That is the provision that
would require recipients to work or live in the state after graduation
for the same number of years that they receive support (which presumably
would be up to four years, given the requirements that students enroll
full time).
Sara Goldrick-Rab, one such advocate and a professor of higher education
policy and sociology at Temple University, posted a series of highly
critical tweets on the provision, calling it "extortion," "bad public
policy" and a "trick." Other aid experts agreed.
Indeed, historically, many scholars of aid policy have said that trying
to "tether" students to states won't work, and that graduates will
follow jobs elsewhere. But many of those debates have been about states
such as Maine that have been losing recent college graduates to other
states with more jobs.
SUNY and CUNY, unlike many public systems in other states, have not
heavily pushed out-of-state recruitment. As a result, both systems
overwhelmingly enroll New York State residents and report that 80-plus
percent (higher for CUNY and high for most community colleges) stay in
the state after graduation.
Marc Cohen, president of the SUNY Student Assembly, said that his group
believes public higher education should be free "without strings," and
that he would not want a recent SUNY or CUNY graduate to pay a financial
cost "for taking a great job out of the state."
At the same time, he said that he didn't see the provision having an
impact on most students. "New York State is the greatest state in the
union, and there are great opportunities here," said Cohen, a master's
student at (and undergraduate alumnus of) SUNY's Albany campus.
Cohen said the big story was really about the opportunities free tuition
would provide. "An affordable and accessible higher education will now
be available to many more people," he said. Cohen said he saw the
program "propelling New York State to being the leader in public higher
education."
What Wasn't in the Bill
The free tuition plan is now part of the New York State budget. As
lobbying over Cuomo's proposal intensified, debate was most fraught over
two proposals that were not in the final deal.
One was proposed by Cuomo. That was to impose limits on how much private
colleges could increase tuition if they wanted in-state students to
remain eligible for grants under the Tuition Assistance Program, which
is one of the most generous student aid programs in the country. Private
college officials said that the tuition limits were inappropriate to
impose on colleges, whose independence should include the right to set
their own tuition rates. While New York State's private colleges include
some relatively well-endowed institutions that attract national student
bodies, most of the colleges depend on tuition for their budgets and
enroll almost entirely students from within the state.
The other was an idea -- rumored in the last two weeks -- that the state
would pay for free tuition in part with a 10 percent tax on unrestricted
gifts to SUNY campuses. This idea (which Cuomo said he opposed) worried
many SUNY leaders. But this, too, was not in the final deal.
An Old Idea/A New Idea
Free tuition for public higher education is not a new idea. Many public
colleges -- including City College of CUNY -- were founded that way. For
a time, all of CUNY was tuition-free, but that ended in 1976, with New
York City facing a fiscal crisis.
The idea was always on the wish list of various activist groups but was
largely dismissed by political leaders as unrealistic.
Then in 2014, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, a Republican, proposed and
quickly won approval for making community college free in his state. It
was the Tennessee plan that led President Obama to propose in 2015 a
state-federal partnership that would have made community college free in
participating states.
Congress never acted on the Obama proposal, but many individual
community college districts -- in particular in California -- have
embraced the idea with a variety of approaches to free community college.
--
So many immigrant groups have swept through our town
that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
http://www.mrbrklyn.com
DRM is THEFT - We are the STAKEHOLDERS - RI Safir 2002
http://www.nylxs.com - Leadership Development in Free Software
http://www2.mrbrklyn.com/resources - Unpublished Archive
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http://www.brooklyn-living.com
Being so tracked is for FARM ANIMALS and and extermination camps,
but incompatible with living as a free human being. -RI Safir 2013
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