The Patriot Post® · Will Making Community College Free Make It Better?

It doesn’t cost a lot to attend a community college in Massachusetts. According to the Department of Higher Education, annual tuition and mandatory fees at the 15 public institutions where a student can earn an associate’s degree in two years range from $6,476 at Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill to $7,560 at Middlesex Community College in Lowell. That is significantly less than it costs to attend a state college or the University of Massachusetts. Which was, of course, the whole idea behind creating the state’s heavily subsidized community colleges — to ensure that an affordable college education would be available to families of even limited means.

For years there have been those who insist that affordable isn’t good enough and that tuition at community colleges should be free. Nearly three decades ago, the chairman of the state Board of Higher Education, James Carlin, argued that taxpayers should underwrite the entire cost of attending community college. “Why should it be,” he demanded in 1997, “that the 12th grade is free, but that the next year of learning costs $2,500 to $3,000 per student?”

Carlin’s idea didn’t fly then but it is taking wing now.

Last year the Legislature added $42 million to the state budget to make community college free for any student over 25 and for students of any age pursuing a nursing degree. A separate budget item authorized more than $60 million to guarantee free tuition and fees, plus a $1,200 stipend for books and supplies, to students at any public college or university in the state from families with incomes of up to $73,000. For those whose families earn between $73,000 to $100,000, fees and tuition were cut in half.

Now the House and Senate want to make community college free for everyone, regardless of income, age, or any other consideration. The budget sent to Governor Maura Healey this month abolishes all tuition and fees at the community colleges, and provides a books-and-supplies stipend for any student whose family income is as high as 125 percent of the state’s median income, or roughly $118,000. If Healey signs it into law, anyone will be able to enroll in a community college on the taxpayers’ dime.

Is that progress?

Legislative leaders certainly think it is. According to Senate President Karen Spilka, free community college is essential to “opening the workforce floodgates to employers who are starved for graduates, so Massachusetts keeps the competitive edge that we pride ourselves in.” An equally enthusiastic Senator Jo Comerford, cochair of the Joint Committee on Higher Education, declared that by “leaping ahead to tackle college affordability and to expand access to public higher education,” Beacon Hill was “offer[ing] Massachusetts residents a world-class education.”

But there are good reasons to doubt that making community college a universal entitlement will generate the benefits advocates predict.

To begin with, making any good or service free encourages people to waste it. No product was ever valued more highly by being given away for nothing. Ultralow community college tuition provides an incentive for many students to enroll, but not having “skin in the game” can diminish the incentive for most of them to graduate. According to the Department of Higher Education, which provided the data to the Globe’s editorial board in June, only 26 percent of students at Massachusetts community colleges earn an associate’s degree from those institutions within six years. A small but significant fraction of community college students do transfer to four-year institutions; nevertheless, only 34 percent of students who enter a Massachusetts community college end up receiving a degree from any US institution.

Will that dismal performance turn around if community colleges are entirely free? In an issue brief for CommonWealth Beacon, published by the nonpartisan think tank MassINC, former Massachusetts education secretary Jim Peyser acknowledges ruefully that abolishing tuition and fees will likely have little effect on those results. “Indeed, by further reducing or eliminating the cost-barrier,” he writes, “more students are likely to enroll on a part-time basis, without a firm commitment to completing a degree and often without adequate academic preparation, a trend that could drive these statistics down even further.”

And what of the effect on students who attend four-year colleges?

On the one hand, it hardly seems fair to abolish tuition, fees, and most expenses for even unmotivated students who enter community college, while students who may be more academically ambitious get hit with a hefty bill in order to attend one of the state’s four-year institutions. Conversely, as Peyser notes, the economic pull of making community college free will almost certainly shift some enrollment away from four-year colleges and universities. For students whose top priority is affordability, zero tuition may seem too good a deal to pass up. The most motivated among them may later transfer to a four-year institution after completing their first two years at a community college for free. But research on “undermatching” suggests that too many will be permanently diverted from the higher-caliber education they could have acquired.

“Free” is a powerful lure, especially for politicians seeking votes and popularity, but it is a dubious spur to hard work and diligence. In a study for the New York Federal Reserve, economist Aysegul Sahin found that “although subsidizing tuition increases enrollment rates, it reduces student effort.” Many, perhaps most, of the students drawn to community colleges by a $0.00 price tag will be the ones least impelled to earn their degree. In an even more distressing finding, she writes that “all students, even the more highly motivated ones, respond to lower tuition levels by decreasing their effort levels.”

So here’s a proposal: The Massachusetts Association of Community Colleges, which was closely involved in crafting the new legislation, projects that free community college for all will boost the number of students earning degrees each year by 2,000. Why not make that the test of whether tuition should be permanently abolished?

In 2022, associate’s degrees were awarded to 8,641 students enrolled in Massachusetts community colleges. If within a couple of years that number has climbed to at least 10,641, Beacon Hill can proclaim the new initiative a success and make it permanent. If not, let the state conclude that a well-meaning experiment fell short. Then it can turn its attention to the search for more effective ways to achieve the goal that everyone wants: the best educational outcome possible for every young person in Massachusetts.