Education Policy, Business and Technology

Proposal highlights role of completion in free-college push

Inside Higher Ed: Even after the November elections put hopes of a national free-college plan on ice, states and local entities have continued to pursue such proposals.

The development of those plans has been motivated by the idea that making college tuition-free to all will level the playing field in the modern economy where everyone needs some higher education. Some of those proposals -- most notably New York State's -- have come under fire as middle-class giveaways.

Harvard University’s David Deming argued in a recent paper that despite free college’s positive impact on relieving the financial burden on students and families, it has another serious limitation -- the open-access and minimally selective colleges most often attended by low-income students are also the institutions with the fewest resources to help those students complete their degrees.

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