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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: It's Today Explained. I'm Sean Rameswaram. On yesterday's show, our own Halima Shah explored President Biden's plan for free universal pre-K, what it might look like in practice. Today, she's going to do the same for his plan to give Americans free universal community college. Good morning.
--:-- Halima Shah: Many of you are halfway through your first week here at Greendale and as your dean. I thought I would share a few thoughts of wisdom and inspiration. What is community college? Well, you've heard all kinds of things. Free community college is another part of Biden's Build Back Better Act. It's kind of his anti-poverty plan, and the current version sets aside $111 billion to make two years of community college free for everyone. And the idea is you'll either get job training or enough credits to transfer to a four-year university.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Halima, did you know that I'm a product of the community college system in this country? Really?
--:-- Halima Shah: What did you think? What did I think of community college? You know, I liked that I got to stay at home with my family a couple extra years, hang out with my parents, my brother, my dogs, my friends. I think it's the reason my high school friends are actually more so my lifelong friends than my college friends, although I got a couple college friends. And I think it worked because I transferred.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Yeah, I mean, the perks of paying less money and staying close to your community is very appealing to a lot of people. but the fact that you transferred to a four-year university actually makes you an exception. I can maybe see that, but is that more the norm to not make it out?
--:-- Halima Shah: It is. A majority of community college students plan to transfer to a four-year school for a bachelor's degree, just like you did, but that plan does not pan out for most of them. You know, I know a lot of them, Halima. Yeah, and what did they tell you? I mean, they just got tired of community college and they went on to pursue careers without finishing college. Yeah. And that plan works out for a lot of people. But the thing is that community college still has a pretty abysmal record of helping students achieve the goals that they set for themselves. And that's why Biden's community college plan is somewhat controversial.
--:-- Halima Shah: I spoke to some other former community college students to see if they think that Biden's plan would have been helpful to them. It's very beautiful, very quiet. Ikra Nasir is 28 years old. She's describing the campus of NOVA, or Northern Virginia Community College, the same college First Lady Jill Biden teaches at.
--:-- Ikra Nasir: When I first started here, I would just sit out here and, you know, decompress from the stress of classes and just chill out.
--:-- Halima Shah: She graduated from here in 2017, and we met up to talk about whether this campus lived up to the promise it made to her years ago. That if your family couldn't pay for a four-year institution, community college was another pathway to a bachelor's degree and upward mobility.
--:-- Ikra Nasir: In high school, they were telling us that community college was way more cheaper than a four-year college. And we also had the ability to transfer once we were done with our two-year college So that made it a very attractive option.
--:-- Halima Shah: It was also an attractive option because people told her more education means more money. And studies show that that is often true. But it's a little more complicated than it seems. Some degrees give a higher income boost than others. An associate's degree will get you, on average, about $17,000 more a year than a high school diploma. But a bachelor's degree will get you about $39,000 more a year than a high school diploma.
--:-- Ikra Nasir: My older sister she graduated high school in 2006 and then she went to college well she was working full-time as well so she had to resort to online college and she found it very difficult to manage both so she eventually ended up dropping out of college and she ended up accruing a lot of student loan debt that she wasn't able to pay back. And so it's still with her to this day. And she very much encouraged me not to take out student loans because, you know, it's a very, very risky thing to do.
--:-- Halima Shah: So in 2011, when ICRA realized that financial aid covered her tuition at NOVA and that school would basically be free, she decided to go. But without much guidance, she struggled to find her way through college. I kind of switched my majors a lot back then. So as a result, I didn't really do well because I didn't really know what I wanted to do. And then in 2013, you know, I kind of hit a rock bottom academically, and I decided to just take a break. And during that break, I decided college is not for me, and I did not plan on going back.
--:-- Halima Shah: But she did go back. In 2015, Iqra returned to NOVA as a political science major. She had plans to work in the non-profit or advocacy sector. When I went back to school, it was, you know, it felt empowering. I began to do well with my grades. I felt inspired that, yes, maybe I can do this. Maybe I can get a degree and create a new life for myself.
--:-- Ikra Nasir: She finished her associate's degree in two years. It was hard to kind of wrap my head around it. I was like, wow, you know, I have a college degree now and at the time I was the first female in my immediate family to have a degree.
--:-- Halima Shah: Ikra wanted to keep going with her education I wanted to transfer to a four university which in this area where I live it would be George Mason University But Ikra didn't transfer to George Mason University. And she's not alone. 80% of students like her plan on getting a bachelor's degree when they start out. But less than 14% actually do.
--:-- Halima Shah: Which kind of makes you wonder why Biden is pushing so hard for universal community college. Too many folks are priced out of a piece of the middle class dream. In 2015, as Obama's vice president, Joe Biden rallied behind community college. I have exciting news. Vice President Joe Biden has been visiting community colleges across the country as part of his Biden Time Talking About Teaching tour. His former boss wanted to make it free. That's why I'm sending this Congress a bold new plan to lower the cost of community college to zero.
--:-- Halima Shah: This used to be the norm. A lot of states had free community college in the middle of the 20th century. But states stopped funding them after a while and community colleges became less affordable. But after the Great Recession, we saw several states and a number of cities revisit the idea and implement some form of free community college.
--:-- Mark Hulsman: Mark Hulsman is a fellow at the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice at Temple University. He studies the affordability issues that many students face in college, and he said that when local governments started pushing for free community college, the federal government noticed. That attracted the attention of the Obama administration, Vice President Biden at the time in particular. And obviously the broader idea of free college began to be socialized within the progressive movement through folks like Senator Bernie Sanders.
--:-- Mark Hulsman: I do believe that when we talk about public education in America today, in a rapidly changing world, we should have free tuition at public colleges and universities. That should be a right of all Americans. So there's this sort of virtuous cycle of political popularity, research that's shown the benefits of free community college and kind of a bipartisan appeal of free community and technical college that it led to at least that being mainstreamed in the political conversation and kind of being a core piece of the democratic policy agenda.
--:-- Halima Shah: When this nation made 12 years of public education universal in the last century, it made us the best educated, best prepared nation in the world. That's probably not true. The U.S. was never number one in primary school, but Biden went on to say in that same speech that 12 years of school isn't enough to compete with the rest of the world. When you add two years of free community college on top of that, you begin to change the dynamic. Biden plans to pay for it, in part through a federal-state partnership. But Mark thinks that the program could work because education often pays for itself.
--:-- Mark Hulsman: The U.S. economy returned $7 for every dollar we put into the original GI Bill. That was the bill that gave a range of benefits to returning World War II veterans, including tuition payment from the government. States see big returns to education when they invest in education. There's a public benefit angle here that I think we can't ignore, and that should be a part of the funding conversation.
--:-- Halima Shah: Some of the key pieces of the latest version of the higher education plan are two years of free community college, more Pell Grant funding, and an additional $9 billion for resources that help students stay in college, not just enroll. To Mark, that's a sign that the plan could work. And there's a lot of reasons why students may not make it to the finish line or the transfer line. One is cost. Community colleges are a lot less affordable than people often think. They tend to be quote unquote low tuition. But the other costs that students face fees, childcare, housing, transportation, books. It's a laundry list of things that can trip students up that students often go into debt for after having exhausted their grant aid.
--:-- Halima Shah: So it's the other cost that forced students to maybe clip their educational aspirations. Maybe they feel like they can't transfer to a more expensive institution if the one that they've already gone to was more expensive than they thought. There are some smaller programs that have shown a lot of promise in getting students to an associate degree or to the finish line, but they all have one thing in common. It's resources. Resources like mentorship might have helped Ikra when she first went to community college and couldn't find the right major. But a lack of resources wasn't the only obstacle in her way. Ikra had to think about her family.
--:-- Ikra Nasir: My mom, she had a lot of health issues with Parkinson's disease and type 2 diabetes. And she needed extra care and attention. So when she graduated from community college, it didn't feel like a good time to transfer. I felt kind of selfish to just abandon my parents and spend all this time studying. So I did sacrifice going to college because of that. I felt like I could go back at any time in my life and go get a degree, but I cannot go get my mom again. So I wanted to look out for her, and she was my first priority.
--:-- Halima Shah: Ikra's mom wanted her to get the bachelor's degree. But even with family support, cost was going to be an issue. If I transferred, I would have to apply for financial aid, and I knew that financial aid wouldn't cover the whole cost of going to George Mason. So I knew at that point I would have to take out loans, and I felt very apprehensive about that. So that apprehension prevented me from actually going through with the process.
--:-- Halima Shah: There was also a good chance that ICRA would have to pay for more than another two years of college. Students like ICRA, when transferring to another institution, lose over 40% of their credits. They end up having to do at least one more semester and paying for it too. But the retention services in Biden's plan are supposed to remedy this. They include mentorship for students and stronger partnership between institutions so students can transfer more seamlessly. By putting billions of dollars into resources into community colleges, ideally that helps things like the clunky and complex transfer process that allows students to have the supports they need.
--:-- Halima Shah: So ideally that's the plan. And because life happens, Biden's plan also funds other non-academic services to help college students succeed. Things like child care and mental health services. In Ikra's case, life kept happening, even after she graduated from community college. She had about a year left to spend with her mom.
--:-- Ikra Nasir: After I got my degree in 2017, I actually worked as her caretaker. I applied to a caretaking agency and they said I could work for my mother And that exactly what I did So at the time it was a great decision because I was literally getting paid to be with my mom. But I did not plan on being a caretaker for very long. I knew that my mother's illness was, you know, growing. And I knew that once she was gone, I would stop doing caretaking and I would try to find another job, a better job, because I know that's what she would want.
--:-- Halima Shah: Ikra's mom died from cancer in 2018. I'm really glad that she got to see me at least get my associate's degree, you know, some kind of college degree before she passed. She hasn't gone back to school like she thought she might have, mostly because of money. And today, Ikra works as a document processor at an e-learning company. She's a contractor, and she doesn't see herself getting a more stable position where she currently works. It would require a lot more skills. Some of the higher-paying roles do require a bachelor's degree, so that's a challenge.
--:-- Halima Shah: After hearing her story, I asked Ikra what she wishes she had as a student, so she could go through with her original plan for a four-year degree. And she told me a couple things. One, just for my parents to be healthy, because that was always on the back of my mind. Two, I wish I would have took a break after high school, figured out who I was, what I wanted, and then went into community college with a solid idea of what do I want to do. And three, I really wish that four-year college were free. And at the time of the 2016 presidential election, that's what Bernie Sanders was kind of advocating for. And I really agreed with that because a lot of these days jobs are requiring four-year degrees.
--:-- Halima Shah: The Biden plan covers just two years of community college. But in Ikra's case, community college was already practically free. And she's still looking for a better job. So how much will tuition-free community college really change? There's one state that might answer that question because it implemented a statewide version of Biden's plan. Wait, which is the state? Take a guess.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: You looked at the notes, Sean. But yes, Tennessee has free community college for everyone. I wish I didn't have notes because then I would like actually have to guess. And I probably wouldn't have guessed Tennessee because I just figure this is like a blue state thing and not a red state thing. It's not just a blue state thing.
--:-- Halima Shah: And some students in Tennessee have even found pathways to a bachelor's degree. And we're going to hear from one of them after the break.
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--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Chime feels like progress. Chime is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bancorp Bank N.A. or Stride Bank N.A. Members FDIC. Spot me eligibility requirements and overdraft limits apply. Timing depends on submission of payment file. Fees apply at out-of-network ATMs. Bank ranking and number of ATMs according to U.S. News and World Report 2023. Chime checking account required.
--:-- Halima Shah: Tamari Ray is from Knoxville, Tennessee. She's 20 years old, and she always knew she wanted to go to college. It's just always been told to me, like, in order to get a better job, in order to make more money, you need to go to college. But it was going to be hard to pay for. I just knew that, you know, financially, I wasn't going to be able to afford it by myself. Just the way that my life is set up, it just wouldn't work out. I don't have daddy's money. I don't have mommy's money.
--:-- Halima Shah: She said in her senior year of high school, she felt like the best option was to play a sport on an athletic scholarship, maybe get an academic scholarship, go to class, keep her grades up, and find a way to juggle a job, too. So I was like, there's no way I can work more than however many hours I'm working now. I'd be dead somewhere. Like, that's a lot of time taken out of my life just to get to college. But things changed when a high school counselor told her about Tennessee Promise, a program that provides free community college to Tennessee high school graduates if they meet a couple requirements.
--:-- Tamari Ray: You needed eight hours of community service every semester. You needed to take 12 hours of classes each semester. and you needed to maintain over a 2.0.
--:-- Halima Shah: Tamari decided to take the scholarship and go to Pellissippi State Community College in Knoxville. A lot of my peers that graduated, you know, a couple years before me or whatever, they were there too. So it is a good stepping stone because, I mean, like, no, it's not necessarily like a university experience, but you still get that community aspect and the opportunity to meet new people and try new things and be in a bunch of different clubs, and they always have events on campus. So it's different from high school, but it's not necessarily like a university, if that makes sense.
--:-- Halima Shah: Tennessee Promise has been really popular. Over 100,000 students have taken advantage of it. But a study that looks at the impact of free community college found that that's not necessarily a good thing. Bruce Sasserdot is one of the co-authors of that study. He's an economist, so get ready to hear a lot of numbers. You'll probably pick up between another three and five percentage points of every high school graduating cohort that will get some college. So that's great news. The slightly less good news is that you might have one or two percentage points of a cohort who were starting at a four-year public, instead started a two-year public, and maybe having lower educational attainment and maybe even lower earnings as a result.
--:-- Bruce Sasserdot: In simpler terms, free community college means more students will go. But some of the students who decide to go to community college as a result of no tuition are students who might have otherwise gone to four-year schools, where they have a much higher chance of finishing with a bachelor degree
--:-- Bruce Sasserdot: Bruce thinks it a good thing that the government is trying to make some higher education free But if it was up to him and his co it would be done differently What I think my co-authors and I would really like to see is free public college for people below a certain income level. Let's call it like $60,000 or $70,000. And there are states around the country that have programs like that. And those seem to be very potent in helping students who really need both the boost of knowing that college is going to be very affordable, but actually for, you know, public college, even with the Pell, is very expensive.
--:-- Halima Shah: Take Tennessee as an example. There's a financial aid program that makes public university free for families who make under $50,000 a year. So Tennessee promised students who want to continue on to a bachelor's can cover the rest of their tuition, which is exactly what Tamari is doing. So I will be a junior this fall at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville.
--:-- Tamari Ray: She's going to major in advertising and public relations. Crossing our fingers nothing happens that I'll graduate with no student debt. No student debt, a four-year degree, and the promise of upward mobility.
--:-- Halima Shah: When ICRA went to school in Virginia, there were no programs like Tennessee Promise. After giving the traditional college pathway a try, ICRA is creating her own plan for the future. One that she thinks others should try too.
--:-- Ikra Nasir: I just want to say to everyone that don't feel pressured by society that you have to get a four-year degree in order to be successful. Because what it really does, it just puts you in a heaping pile of debt that you're pretty much spending most of your life paying off. You know, look at ways where you can earn money that doesn't require getting a degree. I would say if you want to take out a loan, take out a business loan.
--:-- Halima Shah: Ikra takes inspiration from tech leaders who didn't go to college. Like some of them, she wants to start her own business, which she's saving up for. She knows what she loves, and she has some ideas. One of them is, you know, makeup. I want to teach people how to do makeup, and I'm getting that ball rolling. I did start a YouTube channel a few months ago, so I'm hoping that will grow.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Halima Shah not Halim Asha as some may have you believe she's a reporter and a producer and next week once again a fill-in host on Today Explained her two-part education series on the show was fact-checked by Laura Bullard engineered by Efim Shapiro and edited by Matt Collette with help from Jillian Weinberger. The rest of the Today Explained team includes Victoria Chamberlain, Hadi Mawagdi, Will Reed, and Miles Bryan. Our music comes from the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder and sometimes the extremely knowable Noam Hassenfeld, too. Vox's Vip of Audio is Liz Kelly Nelson, and Today Explained is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: One last thing, we're working on a series about the future of work. We did an episode recently on the four-day work week, and in it we talked a lot about how the pandemic has changed our attitudes surrounding work and we want to dig a little deeper into that change. If you've had some revelations about your work life in the past year and a half or so, we'd love to hear about them. Send us an email todayexplained at vox.com or you can tweet at today underscore explained or if you're really into audio like we are, you can call and leave us a voicemail at 202-688-5944. Again, that's 202-688-5944.
--:-- Sean Rameswaram: Thanks. We all have moments where we could have done better, Like cutting your own hair. Oof, yikes. Or forgetting sunscreen so now you look like a tomato. Ouch. Could have done better. Same goes for where you invest. Level up and invest smarter with Schwab. Get market insights, education, and human help when you need it. Learn more at schwab.com.
