Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to ask lawmakers to make community college free for all high school graduates
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to ask lawmakers to make community college free for all high school graduates
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is planning to urge lawmakers to pass legislation that would provide free community college tuition for all high school graduates.
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer plans to urge state lawmakers to pass legislation that would provide free community college tuition for all high school graduates during her sixth State of the State speech on Wednesday.
Whitmer also prioritized community college access in her annual address last year. State lawmakers responded by temporarily lowering the minimum age for free tuition from 25 to 21 years old. The Democratic governor now wants to expand the program by removing all age requirements for free community college, according to details of her plan provided to The Associated Press by Whitmer’s office.
Whitmer’s administration created the Michigan Reconnect program in 2021, aiming to increase the percentage of the state’s workforce with a postsecondary degree or training from 50.5% to 60% by 2030. It made Michigan residents 25 years and older eligible for free community college tuition.
Seems like a great idea to me. Invest in the population and it’ll pay off, long term.
One of my greatest regrets is dropping out of college. I’m doing ok, thankfully, but it hasn’t been an easy path.
You mean requiring a whole population to pay out of pocket for absolutely everything before they can afford it doesn't lead to growth?
One of my greatest regrets is dropping out of college. I’m doing ok, thankfully, but it hasn’t been an easy path.
This is one of those regrets in life you can actually undo!
I dropped out of Community College after a year there at age 19. I went back to that same Community College at about 34 and finished my Associates Degree at night/weekends while working full time. One really nice thing was all of my credits earned as a teenager were still valid after almost 14 years away. I meant that my time there as a teenager wasn't wasted. I transferred all my credits to University again doing school at night/weekends and finished my Bachelors at age 39. It was one of the best decisions of my life.
Before going back to school I had all kind of anxiety about it. It was much easier as mature adult than as a teenager. I'm happy to share advice or just encouragement if it will help you.
The Republicans will hate this one trick.
Certainly a much better approach than "I love the poorly educated".
As society gets more complex, it’s more important than ever for everyone to be more educated. The death of journalism, rise of online scams, gutting of consumer protections and degeneration of politics makes it more critical for people to learn to think
Calm down Michigan, save some good ideas for the rest of us!
It’s balanced by our lovely bunch of insurrectionists
Every tax dollar spent on education brings in more than $1 net present value of future income tax.
Yes but what if Lenin comes back from the dead and makes my kids gay?
SOCIALIST! REAL Patriots use Tax Dollars to give Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos more money, NOT Educate Kids!
Already in effect in California. :)
Surprisingly, in Tennessee now, too. Just wish it had been a thing 20 years ago
Yeah I agree. Better than never!
Missouri has had the A+ program since before I graduated in 2003, if you graduate high school with a 2.5 GPA (that was barely passing back then, idk what it is now) you got free community college.
TIL community colleges are not free...
Definitely cheaper than public/private colleges, but not free. I think my classes came out to ~$1k per semester when I was going to my local community college. It’s still a significant sum for many, but it meant I didn’t need to take out student loans and could pay it off via part time work.
Free college and legal weed? Why do you have to be so cold, Michigan?
See also: Canada.
There is this theory that cultures that were developing in colder places had less reason to be wary of strangers, due to diseases being less transmittable in the cold, and because of that they turned out more progressive.
CHEAP legal weed😁
It won't be cold for much longer with the way climate change is heading. I moved to Detroit a few years ago, and all my neighbors have commented on how little snow we're getting and how warm winters have been.
Eh?
Oooo, I like this. Free Associates Degree and if you want to go on to get a Bachelor's it now costs 50% less!
Stick it straight to the for-profit college system.
IIRC New Mexico residents actually get free tuition at all state public universities (including 4 years)
As a resident in Michigan, this is good news but definitely not something we need to focus on at this point in time.
The state government needs to focus on the basics and by that I mean clean water. Flint still has a water crisis and many cities like Brenton Harbor as well as northern Michigan towns face the same issues.
It is possible they can fix the water infrastructure and provide free community college since they do have a large budget surplus.
School course books are more expensive then community college fee.
Because for some reason, in North America we determined that the best way to ensure that your population is educated and ready to be a powerhouse of innovation and productivity is to make the education required to achieve that as expensive and as out of reach as possible.
why limit it to only high school graduates?
I would assume those who could actually reasonably pass.
Saying that, over here you automatically get uni entrance when you hit 20 so those who grew after high-school aren't disadvantaged. Have somethings similar would be good.
My guess is it has to do with effective use of resources. The tuition is free to the student but not the taxpayer. Teachers and administrators don’t work for free. If you can’t get through state funded education up to high school then the chances probably aren’t great for college. Those seeking a second chance could always complete a ged and get the benefit, hopefully.
It's a step in the right direction but won't help if employers are only hiring senior roles or upping the requirements for entry level positions as they did in the past.
That's an oddly specific whataboutism. Your premise is bullshit. More education, especially in trades which CC specialize in, is a huge benefit that improves employment outcomes. A better educated workforce also attracts employers. The classic econometrics formula (actually documented in textbooks written by Dr. Jeffrey Woolrich at MSU) is literally: Salary = Education + Ability. Education has a clear positive impact, ability is much harder to measure
In fact it could upskill nearly half the state: https://www.statista.com/statistics/588922/educational-attainment-michigan/#:~:text=Educational attainment in Michigan 2021&text=In 2021%2C about 19.2 percent,their highest level of education.
Good idea, hope this does not deteriorate the quality of education. Corruption gets very rampant in public education when there isn't constant and vigilant oversight.
Why would poor high school grads going to college for free corrupt it?
The same reason poor highschool kids are often part of the school to prison pipeline. Corruption in poor students' education leads to intentionally poor education which leads them to struggle as adults to meet the requirements of jobs that a student who got a scholarship to a "good" school will. I think this is a good idea but it's not enough to make community college free. Higher education in general needs to come down drastically in price and the difference in cost between schools needs to come down as well. There is already judgment in adulthood about which school you went to. Now imagine what that judgement will be like when they find out you went to the free kind of community college.
Does it?
I'm usually against free college, but this is actually a really great idea. It makes education available to everyone, without the additional risk of government mismanagement hamstringing our world-class universities in the process.
Why are you usually against free college?
Because I see the state of public school funding in the US, and I think it's utterly, ludicrously naive to think that our universities will somehow magically avoid the same fate. We live in a world where there's a very real possibility that Trump is elected again, and the people advocating for free college don't seem to be able to put two and two together to realize that this would put Trump's government in complete control of the funding of the universities that he condemns as "liberal brainwashing".
The push for all universities to be free in the US is nothing but utopian wishful thinking that ignores the actual state of US politics, and will have disastrous real-world consequences for the already shaky state of education in the US.
Making community college free seems like a pretty ideal compromise though - everyone gets access to college, and the ability of our universities to take advantage of funding through tuition to ensure that their quality remains among the best in the world is unimpeded.