The Campaign for Free College Tuition’s (CFTC) recently held a very successful plenary meeting – and conference call for out-of-town participants – to consider the work of the taskforces that were formed at the conclusion of our Free College Summit in January. The discussions focused on finding common ground to build support for free tuition for community colleges. The taskforces were asked to develop answers to the following five questions:
How to pay for free community college tuition?
What should be the requirement for states to participate in a federal initiative to make community colleges tuition free?
What performance metrics should be used or required to gauge institutional effectiveness?
What can be done to address the non-tuition costs of college attendance?
What are the remediation, mentoring and other non-monetary elements needed to effect the changes required to increase both college access and completion?
Thanks to the dedication and hard work of higher education, business, labor and Millennial representatives participating in the taskforce process, nearly 30 plenary meeting attendees, including senior policy experts and higher education officials, were able to review discussion drafts that fleshed out public policy options – primarily building on President Obama’s America’s College Promise proposal. While few decisions were made at the plenary meeting, participants agreed to continue taskforce level discussions leading to a possible consensus position and, ultimately, a report to policy makers.
The group will reconvene in late April or early May to determine if enough progress has been made to unite in a broad-based coalition to advance free community college on the federal, state and/or local levels. We look forward to working with them to expand college access and affordability!
In the meantime, please continue to email us your thoughts and ideas to make college tuition free in all 50 states.
Our goal is to make higher education a possibility for every American, without regard to their financial circumstances.
We have a lot to do and not much time to do it, so your support is critical for our campaign to succeed. It’s with your investment that we can fundamentally reform how higher education is financed in this country, opening the doors to a more equitable society.
If you agree with our goal, our plan, and the urgency of the problem, we ask that you give what you can to help us write the next chapter in our nation’s history of continuously expanding access to universal, free education.
