Two of our nation’s most elite universities – Harvard and Stanford –have garnered recent media attention as they take steps to use their massive endowments to make college tuition free for most students. While these efforts to provide free tuition are praiseworthy, this ought to be the rule for all post-secondary education, from welding school to MIT.
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2015
Legislators Urged to Make California’s
Community Colleges Tuition Free
CFCT President Testifies before California Senate Subcommittee
SACRAMENTO, CA – Campaign for Free College Tuition President Morley Winograd urged legislators to make California’s community colleges tuition-free. In testimony before the Senate Budget Subcommittee on Education, Winograd stated “I firmly believe -- given the data from Kalamazoo, Tennessee and other promise programs -- that when going to college isn't about income and where you come from, we see attitudes change. It is the single most important thing that we can do, from a public policy perspective, to improve people's lives.”
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Today, Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Oakland Superintendent Antwan Wilson, were joined by dignitaries from across California and the country to launch one of the most ambitious and comprehensive cradle-to-career initiatives in the nation. The Oakland Promise is a cross-sector collaborative initiative designed to ensure that all Oakland students graduate high school with the expectations, resources, and skills to complete college and be successful in a career of their choice. One of the reasons that U.S. Department of Education Under Secretary Ted Mitchell, California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, University of California President Janet Napolitano, and our own President, Morley Winograd, attended the announcement is the scope and ambition of the Oakland Promise.
Read moreAverage yearly tuition at a four-year college has risen to over $21,000 a year. Public college tuition rates have spiked to an average of almost $8,000 a year for in-state students. Americans owe more money on their student loans than they do on all the cars on the road today.
Read moreOne year ago, on January 9, President Obama joined Republican Governor Bill Haslam in Tennessee to announce the American College Promise that would make the nation’s community colleges tuition free. It was a triumphal moment for our efforts to make college tuition free, coming less than a year after we launched our Campaign for Free College Tuition. Since the President’s announcement, we have continued to promote the idea of free college tuition in forums across the country, often with the support and presence of Under Secretary of Education Ted Mitchell.
Read moreWatch:
Read moreJust six months after the launch of the Campaign for Free College Tuition (CFCT), President Barack Obama announced on January 9, 2015 his America’s College Promise proposal to make public community colleges tuition-fee in Knoxville, Tennessee with the state’s Republican Governor, Bill Haslam. At the time, we stated, “President Obama has sent a powerful signal in choosing to announce his proposal in Knoxville, with Governor Bill Haslam...Thanks to his leadership [with the Tennessee Promise] and the President’s, the once seemingly unattainable idea of tuition-free college is gaining broad bipartisan support.”
Read moreThe Kalamazoo Promise turns 10 this year, and what a decade it has been!
In November of 2005, the Kalamazoo Promise was first announced. An anonymous group of donors pledged to cover the cost of tuition and fees at any one of Michigan’s 44 public colleges and universities for students graduating from the Kalamazoo Public Schools (KPS) district. The goal of the Kalamazoo Promise was to incentivize student enrollment in local K-12 schools from an early age, increase college success for all students, and develop a more skilled local workforce.
Free college tuition was not even a topic in the 2012 Presidential campaign. My how times have changed for the better.
Read moreEver since President Obama announced Americas College Promise, his plan to make community colleges tuition free, the debate and conversation about making colleges free has been building with many productive ideas coming forward. This month, the San Diego Community College District may have become the first community college district in the country to approve an endorsement resolution supporting these efforts to make a community college education more affordable. That is just one step of many that we need to take down the road to a future where a college education is expected, accessible and affordable for all young people in our country.
Read moreOur 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.
