'Free college' isn't enough to raise success rates for low-income students

Ten years after Tennessee began offering "free"community college, more students are completing two-year degrees, reports Hechinger's Jill Barshay. But low-income students need more help to stay on course, according to a 10-year anniversary report by College Promise and tnAchieves.

Thirty-seven states offer free tuition programs of various kinds, Barshay writes. In Tennessee, all high school graduates are eligible, regardless of family income.

"Before the free tuition program went statewide, only 16 percent of Tennessee students who started community college in 2011 had earned an associate degree three years later," she writes. That rose to 28 percent by 2020, five years after the Tennessee Promise started. Graduation rates also rose in other states, but not as sharply. "Tennessee quickly went from being a laggard in young adult college attainment to a leader – at least until the pandemic hit." Then community college enrollment crashed. It hasn't yet returned to 2019 levels.

Many low-income students don't benefit from the Tennessee Promise, which "only pays out after other forms of financial aid are exhausted, Barshay writes. The $7,395 federal Pell Grant more than covers the average tuition of $4,500 at community and technical colleges.

To help low-income and first-generation students succeed, Tennessee added coaching and mentoring in 2018, and emergency grants of up to $1,000 in 2022. The extra support has raised completion rates.

Also on the Hechinger Report, Nina Agrawal looks at how four less-selective public universities have raised graduation rates for low-income students.

Nationally, just under half of students who qualify for Pell Grants complete a four-year degree within six years, compared to more than two-thirds of students from more affluent families, she notes.

At Montclair State and Rutgers-Newark in New Jersey and the University of California campuses in Riverside and Merced, a majority of students receive Pell Grants, and at least 65 percent graduate within six years.

Reducing financial barriers and providing emergency grants helps, but isn't enough, Agrawal writes.

At Montclair State, Ernesto Reyes Velasco, the son of immigrants from Mexico, attended a summer "boot camp" to prepare for college. He receives mandatory tutoring during his first semester, and meets

UC Riverside and Rutgers University-Newark both offer remedial math or writing in the summer before freshman year to underprepared students.

UC Riverside students places first-year students in study groups to help them pass “gateway courses” such as biology, chemistry, math or physics.

Some universities place groups of students in “learning communities,” in which they "take core classes together, participate in workshops, get exposed to career development and sometimes live together," write Agrawal.

Matthew Lansing, a first-generation student at Merced, joined a learning community focused on clean energy in his freshman year. The group took some core classes together and discussed energy topics at weekly dinners. That's how he got to know Professor Sarah Kurtz, the chair of electrical engineering, who got him into a summer environmental science program. He's majoring in electrical engineering.