Free tuition not a cure-all, warn Mass. educators
Educators praise Governor Deval Patrick's proposal to make community colleges free for all future Massachusetts high school graduates as a bold initiative that would encourage more struggling students to attend the two-year schools. But they caution that it will not remedy the financial crunch for students who juggle school and full-time work to support themselves and their families.
Paying Massachusetts community colleges' annual tuition , which ranked as the 13th-highest in the nation last year, is only one obstacle. The costs of housing, health and child care, and transportation are often more imposing barriers to earning a degree for community college students. The students with the lowest incomes are often living on their own and responsible for themselves.
"It's not a cure-all, and I don't think it's going to benefit who they think it's going to benefit," said Susan Sullivan , director of the financial aid office at Bunker Hill Community College. "It will help kids who go to school while they live with mom and dad. But it isn't going to help with the problems our students have, because they can't just give up their jobs."
Bunker Hill, for example, estimates that a student spends on average $10,800 a year for overall living expenses, more than four times the $2,554 in tuition and fees for full-time students. Financial aid rarely covers all expenses.
Ibeth Tejada , for instance, entered Bunker Hill Community College three years ago right out of high school. She had planned to study hard and finish fast, but her mother lost one of her jobs, and money got tight.
Now 21, Tejada works 50 hours a week as an assistant manager at Burger King to help pay her family's bills. She has had to cut back to being a part-time student and is taking one class this semester.
Dana Mohler-Faria , Patrick's top education adviser, said he recognized that the free tuition plan would not eliminate the financial burden of community college.
"We understand that attending college is more than tuition and fees," he said. "This won't resolve all our issues, but it will make a major difference."
Patrick's proposal, part of the sweeping "cradle-to-career" education reform plan he announced June 1, aims to enrich the state's workforce by helping more students attend college and earn their degrees more quickly. Some legislators have expressed concern about how to pay for the community college plan, which the Board of Higher Education estimates would cost as much as $175 million a year for the roughly 200,000 students who attend the state's 15 community colleges. A commission studying Patrick's proposals is expected to announce more specific details about how the plan would work next March. The proposal will require legislative approval.
The Patrick administration has not decided whether the program would be open to all community college students or whether eligibility would be narrowed by such factors as income, whether the student was attending school full time, and whether the student entered college immediately after high school.
The Board of Higher Education, which supports the proposal, recommends restricting eligibility to full-time students who completed four years of English and math in high school and enroll directly after high school. No income requirement has been proposed.
The plan signals that the state is willing to help, said Robert Pura, president of Greenfield Community College.
"For many students, those costs are daunting, and the doors look closed," he said. "But this provides some hope."
State Senator Robert O'Leary, a Democrat and chairman of the Legislature's Higher Education Committee who teaches a history and government class at Cape Cod Community College, said many of his students work full time at low-wage jobs and still cannot afford their books.
Iris Godes , dean of enrollment management at Quinsigamond Community College in Worcester, said Patrick's plan would make a "significant dent" for students who are living with their parents, but she, too, thought self-supporting students would still find it tough.
"Looking at independent students with a family, there's still a big gap there, especially if they want to go to school full time," Godes said.
Some administrators say that if Patrick's proposal is found to be too expensive, the tuition waiver should be targeted toward low-income students.
"We should start with the poorest," said Wayne Burton, president of North Shore Community College. Burton said eliminating tuition would help low-income students take more classes and graduate faster.
Besides the concern of juggling full-time work with school, students also fret about some significant secondary costs. Some community college students decide to attend classes part-time to avoid paying $900 for health insurance, which is required of full-time students, financial aid officers said. Insurance, a longstanding requirement, has become far more expensive in the past few years, administrators said. The cost of textbooks has also risen sharply.
"They are scraping to make ends meet," said Joseph LeBlanc , president of the Massachusetts Community College Council. "Some are working two, three jobs to make it. And if they can't, they wind up dropping out or taking fewer courses."
Tejada lives in South Boston with her mother and young sister and helps support them on her weekly pay of $400, $50 of which she keeps for herself. She wants to complete her classes and move on to a four-year college, probably the University of Massachusetts at Boston, next year to study business marketing. But for now, she is focused on getting through the final four courses she needs to graduate from Bunker Hill.
Even with free tuition, Tejada would need to help her mother with the $400 monthly rent and other expenses, and pay $500 each semester for her textbooks. She would still have to work, but maybe not quite as much.
"I would try to work less and study more," she said.
Kimberly Drinkwater , a 27-year-old mother of two, receives financial aid to cover the cost of her part-time nursing classes at Bunker Hill, and her mother watches her children when she is at school because she cannot afford day care. But even working 25 hours a week in the student orientation office, she is barely getting by.
"Tuition only begins to cover the actual cost," she said. "I'm falling behind every term I'm here, so I'm trying to finish as fast as I can."
Patricia F. Plummer , chancellor of the state Board of Higher Education, said she believes the plan would persuade more students to forgo a paycheck for a long-term payoff.
"It won't be easy for some students, but there's a light at the end of the tunnel," she said. "You know there's a job waiting for you that's much higher-paying than you could have gotten without college."
Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com. 