The Dollars and Sense of Free College. Executive Summary

This is the executive summary for the report, "The Dollars and Sense of Free College." Policymakers have debated the specifics of free-college programs--including whether free-college eligibility should extend to students at four-year public colleges as well as community colleges, and whether it should be universal or targeted to low-income and middle-income students. Free-college proposals generally reflect support for some form of publicly funded program that makes college attendance affordable for a majority of students. Joe Biden endorsed a free-college plan that was originally part of the party's platform in the previous election. This plan would make public community colleges tuition-free for all students. It also would make four-year public colleges and universities tuition-free for students with family incomes under $125,000, which would mean that approximately 80 percent of in-state undergraduate students at public four-year colleges and universities would not have to pay tuition. The federal government and state governments would share the costs of this program, with the federal government contributing $2 for every $1 contributed by a state. While the Biden plan has immediate relevance to the 2020 election, there are other ways to design free-college plans. This report discusses a variety of free-college models and assesses their relative costs and benefits. [For the full report, see ED608985.]