NC defies national trend on community college affordability

Though federal lawmakers introduced legislation last week that would make two years of community college free, the N.C. Senate budget proposal increases the cost of a community college education.

The budget proposal, which is now being debated in closed conference committee by members of both the N.C. House and Senate, would increase community colleges’ cost per credit hour by $4. The maximum increase for resident tuition would be capped at $128.

Although the budget proposed would increase tuition for students, it would also raise the salaries of instructional personnel within the North Carolina Community College System.

The national College Promise Act of 2015 comes after a recent nationwide trend of making community college more affordable to citizens.

Jenna Robinson, president of the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, said she thinks the passing of the College Promise Act of 2015 would be a mistake.

“First because for the very poorest students, community college is pretty much already free between Pell Grants and between the amount of money the state spends toward education,” Robinson said.

“It would essentially be a subsidy to middle-income people and encourage them to take a path that might not be the best for them — just because it’s free,” she said.

Robinson said community colleges play an important role in education.

“I think community colleges have gotten considerably less than the UNC system, and I think that the state is probably underfunding them to some extent, but despite that, they have been able to do some amazing things,” she said.

Austin Lacy, a research education analyst at RTI International in Research Triangle Park, said North Carolina has made a commitment to keeping education affordable, whether it’s at a community college or at the four-year university level.

He said he views the potential future implementation of the College Promise Act of 2015 as a welcome innovation.

He also said it is part of states’ responsibilities to test out policies before they are implemented on a federal level.

“From my perspective, we have these ideas of states being laboratories of innovation,” he said.“They innovate the policies, you see how it works and then maybe they bubble up on the national landscape scale.”

Michael Little, a UNC doctoral student in education policy, said he thinks North Carolina legislators are acting regressively.

“Clearly the last few years there’s been some reductions and further reductions, and I think that’s kind of bucking the national trend — and it’s not that this is really a left-right issue,” he said. “I mean, the leader in this — and first in the nation — is Tennessee, which is very conservative leadership there.”

Little said he supports the College Promise Act of 2015 because of the potential opportunities it can provide.

“A real problem in post-secondary education is that lower-income people leave programs at a much higher rate than higher-income people, and that’s just because if you’re really stretched thin and don’t have a lot of money, it’s hard to go to a class and pay for books and stuff when you don’t have money to pay your bills,” he said.

“So it just helps people who are really trying to better themselves but need some support to do it.”

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