Joe Biden Wants To Make Community College Free. Can Progressives Push Him Further? [View all]

[DonViejo]

04/25/2021 06:00 am ET Updated 1 hour ago

Making community college tuition-free has “no political downside.” Free four-year degrees are a tougher political sell.

By Kevin Robillard

DIXON, Illinois ― President Joe Biden’s administration is set to push to make community college tuition-free across the country, a potentially revolutionary policy that could nonetheless disappoint progressives who hope to persuade him to turn a campaign plan to make four-year public colleges free into a reality.

On Monday, first lady Jill Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona traveled to Sauk Valley Community College here to extol the virtues of the nation’s community colleges as economic boosters and institutions open to all economic and social classes. It’s a familiar role for Jill Biden, a longtime professor at Northern Virginia Community College who has spent much of the past decade pushing to make community colleges free.

“Community colleges are our future,” Biden said, without ever directly mentioning her husband’s yet-to-be-formally-unveiled plan to make them tuition-free. (The president is expected to lay out his proposal, part of the broader American Families Plan, during a Wednesday address to Congress.)

There is relatively little intra-Democratic debate over free community college. Progressives and moderates have both embraced the idea, which has broad support in public surveys. More than a dozen states, including several controlled by Republicans, have made attending the two-year schools free over the past decade, and mounting evidence suggests the programs have enticed more low-income students to earn associate’s degrees or complete job-training programs that are often essential to economic survival in 21st-century America.

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https://www.huffpost.com/entry/joe-biden-community-college-free_n_6084a67ce4b09a22a4429e69