Virtual Book Club

Welcome to CFCT’s Virtual Book Club!

We started this feature on our website during the pandemic to give our supporters information on good books they could read about Higher Education. The virtual format allows you and other readers to comment on the book and share your thoughts with fellow believers in the cause of free tuition, right from the comfort of your home.

We chose Paul Tough’s wonderful book, The Years that Matter Most to start our virtual book club, and now we are pleased to add an equally important and thoughtful book – The Path to Free College by Michelle Miller-Adams

We strongly suggest purchasing a copy today (whether from Amazon or your favorite local independent bookstore) and cracking it open as soon as it arrives!

For additional information, please watch this clip of Michelle presenting the theme of the book, which is all about how to continue to make progress toward our goal of making college tuition free in all fifty states.

BUY THE BOOK

Below you can read analysis from members of our book club.

Michelle’s book might inspire you to think your own big thoughts about higher education, and we welcome your contributions to the discussion if you are moved to write about your own big ideas after reading it. Just send your blog to [email protected]ow.org (please include "Book Club" in the subject line) and we will be happy to curate it for publication.

It's Past Time for a Fundamental Review of Our Nation's Public Education

Posted by Harris Miller on May 13, 2021 at 11:39 AM

The concept for high schools as we know them in the US was developed just before the pandemic. No, not the Covid 19 pandemic. The flu pandemic of 1918-1919. Yes, it has been well over a century since there was a deep dive into what secondary school should be in this country and how to effectively coordinate that with post-secondary education and workforce preparation.

It is time, and past time, for another fundamental review. And there is no better guide for such a review than Michelle Miller-Adams new book, The Path to Free College.

Posted by Dick Startz on May 12, 2021 at 7:41 AM

President Biden’s free community college tuition proposal in the American Families Plan may be the ultimate middle-class benefit. Americans with some college, more than a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree, are smack in the middle of the education distribution and of the income distribution. In the past this middle spot was held by those whose education stopped at grade 12. If we’ve long thought that getting to that middle position should be free, as in high school being free, it makes sense nowadays to make community college free.

Posted by Morley Winograd on May 05, 2021 at 8:08 AM

In her newest book, The Path to Free College, Michelle Miller-Adams, the most authoritative voice on free college tuition in the country, gives readers a chance to learn everything they need to know about the idea that began in her hometown of Kalamazoo, MI and which today animates the Campaign for Free College Tuition’s work.

Using research data, personal stories, and comparisons of existing state and local Promise programs, Michelle answers the fundamental question that forms the book’s recurring theme, “Why Free College?”

We can't do this alone!

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.