I am late to this thread, but I didn’t see a lot of comments about how colleges are likely to react, so here goes.
For subsidizes to higher education, people have enjoyed grants, loans and tax benefits. Now President Obama had determined community college will be completely free. However, you should know that most of the joy will, as before, be shared among college finance directors.
To understand how we finance officers game the system you have to endure a bit of math. The Department of Education (DOE) requires colleges to prepare student budgets, and families to complete a financial aid form. DOE then determines an expected family contribution. The difference between the budget and expected family contribution the college then attempts to fill with awards. In most cases, at least for privates, there always remains an unmet need. However, students still successfully complete the school year.
I analyzed this figure to hold financial aid people accountable for adopting standards for awards which took into account this unmet need that families overcame. During my tenure the American Opportunity Credit and Lifetime Learning Credit were supposedly of direct benefit to the student and their parents. Instead I plugged those figures into my standards for unmet need to require greater average contributions and lesser awards by the college. I made sure the student and their parents were conduits for and not recipients of the majority of these tax benefits.
This story illustrates how financial people have behaved ever since the feds started throwing money at colleges. I am sure my colleagues will be up to the challenges this new task as well.
The Pell Grant is just that, free college for poor students as it pays tuition, books, and occasionally a refund check ...if money is left over for that semester’s cost. I am a former Community College Instructor.
Obama’s free two year college plan is not free he said, as with all BS money he wants, there is a catch. There is work to be done for it he told media...I wait with baited breath to find out what the Community Organizer has in store for these young people....I know you can imagine many more community organizers working for the Democrats on taxpayer dollars.
I believe a lot of this smoke and mirror campaign is because Community College has not been a hotbed of activist instructors teaching the youth how to be a Marxist or fill a communist leftist agenda.
The majority of Instructors, and I say that with a ??, in my opinion have stuck to the curriculum and taught the subject matter. Our Liar In Chief would like to change that influence to resemble the corrupt Universities carrying water for the far left.
How the money will be spent is not my field, however I know students recently who have used a Pell Grant and it paid for the total cost to help them get going in a career, as their parents are single, one has ill parent, or many come from poor families.
Some of the programs are RN, EMT, Heating & A/C, Electrician, CJ-BLET, Cosmetology and various trade programs. There is the College Transfer Program for those who will go to University for a four year major degree.
The Pell Grant is granted in dollars based on the families last Income Tax form filed the former year.
So the Zero plan is devious, because this is already in place and has been used for many decades to educate those who need it but can’t afford it, even adults who must retrain or change careers.