Preconditions for the “Free University” Program Appearing all over the country The recent focus has been that reducing the cost of higher education to almost zero will encourage more students to enroll and complete a degree.
But is that actually what happens?
David Monahan, an associate professor of sociology at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, has explored this question in a series of recent studies, finding that not all of these free college programs are having the intended effect, and that the way they’re set up can make a big difference.
in Working Paper For example, in a paper published last month by Monahan and his co-author, he took a detailed look at the outcomes of two free college programs in Pennsylvania.
One such program is Lehigh Carbon Community College’s Morgan Success Scholarship, which is available to Tamaqua Area High School students enrolling immediately after completing their high school degree. Qualified students are guaranteed full tuition, and the program will pay whatever is left after the student applies for other financial aid and scholarships (a model known as the “last dollar, tuition-only guarantee”).
The other is the Community College of Philadelphia’s 50th Anniversary Scholars Program, which is open to students who have graduated from a Philadelphia high school and meet other academic standards. It is also a “last dollar” program that covers tuition and fees not paid from other sources. Students must enroll immediately after high school, be low-income enough to qualify for a federal Pell Grant, submit a federal financial aid application by a specified deadline, and complete at least six college credits.
The Morgan Success Scholarship appears to have worked as its designers hoped: The year after the program began, Tamaqua Area High School’s college-going rate jumped from 86 percent to 94 percent, and the following year, the college-going rate increased another 1 percent. The number of students graduating with two-year degrees from Lehigh Carbon Community College also increased after the program began.
But something else unintended happened: the free college program appears to have caused some students who would have enrolled in a four-year college to start at a two-year college instead. Whether they ultimately enrolled in a four-year college is unclear. This means the program may prevent some students from completing a four-year degree. “Overall, the program appears to have expanded access to higher education rather than hindered completion of a four-year degree, although that is what it appears to have done,” the paper argues.
Meanwhile, the Community College of Philadelphia’s free college program appears to be having little effect.
“We were hoping to see an increase in enrollment, but we haven’t even seen that,” Monahan said.
In other words, it is not even clear from the data whether free college education initiatives have led to an increase in college enrolments.
That may be because program leaders didn’t spread enough awareness about the option or what it took to apply, he said. Because the program was open to all high schools in the city, that communication was more difficult than it had been for other programs they studied.
“Our analysis suggests that tuition guarantees are not necessarily effective on their own,” he and his co-authors wrote in the paper. “If a program fails and no one hears about it, enrollment patterns are unlikely to change.”
Monahan said the findings suggest more attention needs to be paid to the details of how free college programs work, especially because many of them are restrictive and require students to jump through a series of hurdles to access them — which can be daunting for 17- and 18-year-olds graduating from high school.
“We overestimate where people are when they graduate from high school,” he argues, and how intelligently we can judge the costs and benefits of higher education. “There’s not enough research done on how free college programs are implemented and communicated,” he adds.
Of course, it’s also worth noting that some free college programs will see huge increases in enrollment, which could have another unintended side effect: a strain on resources at two-year institutions.
In Massachusetts, MassReconnect The program, which launches in 2023, enrolled more than 5,000 freshmen in its first semester, according to the release. Report From the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education.
As a result, the state’s 15 community colleges Had difficulty hiring sufficient staff To meet new demand, it became necessary to hire more faculty members, including part-time lecturers.
What is it that has generated so much interest in this program? Unlike the program studied in Pennsylvania, MassReconnect is open to anyone over the age of 25, not just those just graduating from high school, meaning it reaches a much larger pool of potential participants.
Another Working Paper Monahan researched as much research as he could about free college programs and found a variety of effects.
And this may be the biggest lesson of all: When it comes to free college programs, the problems lie in the details of how they are set up and communicated.
