As of November 2014, Redeeming America's Promise is now named the Campaign for Free College Tuition. American Promise scholarships are now known as National Promise scholarships.
I provided the following response to a recent Inside Higher Education blog post that misstates how Redeeming America’s Promise will impact community colleges. If you agree with us that the status quo of staggering tuition inflation and student debt is unacceptable, please endorse our plan today.
"Matt Reed misunderstands and misstates important aspects of the Redeeming America’s Promise proposal but he gets one thing right: it would limit tuition inflation to the consumer price index for students using America Promise Scholarships to cover in-state tuition charges at public two and four year colleges. To be clear, ending unwarranted tuition inflation is one of our major policy goals. It is simply unacceptable that tuition costs have risen over 500% since 1985, a rate even greater than health care inflation.
The RAP proposal shows that tuition at public colleges can be free without new income taxes or raising either personal or national debt. The APS scholarship amounts are set based on national averages for two and four year college tuition. It may be that these scholarships amounts will vary to reflect interstate and intrastate differences. As long as the total does not exceed the national averages, the RAP proposal for free tuition at public colleges is affordable within current federal budget limits.
Removing cost as a barrier to higher education requires meaningful action at the federal, state and institution levels. We believe that American colleges and universities are fully capable of being able to provide quality curricula while also curtailing tuition costs."
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.
