articles about free education

Is free college a good idea? Increasingly, evidence says yes

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, douglas n. harris douglas n. harris nonresident senior fellow - governance studies , brown center on education policy , professor and chair, department of economics - tulane university.

May 10, 2021

10 min read

In just a few short years, the idea of free college has moved from a radical idea to mainstream Democratic thinking. President Biden made free college one of his core campaign planks , and one that the first lady has been promoting for years. In his recent address to Congress, the president also signaled that he is ready for legislative action on a scaled-back version of the idea as part of his American Families Plan .

Two weeks ago, the nonprofit College Promise (CP)—led by Martha Kanter, who served as President Obama’s undersecretary for education—also released a proposal that will influence the free college debate. (Full disclosure: I previously advised the Biden campaign and presently advise CP, but have received no compensation for these efforts.)

In today’s polarized environment, the free college idea stands out for its bipartisan support. A majority of self-identified Republicans has supported the notion of free college in some polls. In fact, one of the first such statewide programs was put in place by Bill Haslam, the former Republican governor of Tennessee. While this could go the way of Obamacare, which faced strong GOP congressional opposition despite the law’s origins with Republican Mitt Romney, free college seems different. Biden’s latest plan only applies to community colleges, which focus on career and vocational education of the sort Republicans support, as opposed to universities, which many Republicans view as hostile battlegrounds in a culture war.

But I am less interested in the politics than the evidence of effectiveness. I have studied college access for many years and run two randomized control trials of financial aid , which produced some of the first causal evidence on free college in Milwaukee. Two years ago, Brookings released the first installment of the Milwaukee work, which I carried out with a team of researchers. Since then, we have collected more data and learned more about how students responded over time. Below, I summarize our just-released study (co-authored with Jonathan Mills), compare our results to other financial aid programs, and then discuss implications for the Biden and CP proposals. Consequently, I conclude that the evidence increasingly favors free college and “open access aid” more generally.

What Did We Learn in Milwaukee?

I developed The Degree Project (TDP) in 2009 as a demonstration program in partnership between the nonprofit Ascendium (then known as the Great Lakes Higher Education Corporation and Affiliates) and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). TDP offered all first-time 9 th graders in half of MPS high schools $12,000 for college as “last-dollar” aid. Students could use the funds for college if they graduated from high school on time with a GPA of 2.5 and a class attendance rate of 90%. Also, as is the norm with free college programs, students had to fill out the FAFSA and have at least one dollar of unmet need. The aid could be used to attend any of the 66 public, in-state, two- or four-year colleges in Wisconsin. Ascendium provided up to $31 million to fund the grant and, as the main program administrator, sent regular letters to remind students about the program and its requirements. The organization also worked with school counselors to support students becoming eligible for the funds and preparing for college.

TDP was announced to students in the fall of 2011. Using anonymized data, we then tracked students’ high school, college, and life outcomes for eight years, and we recently received data extending through when students were roughly 22 years old. As a rare randomized trial, we could estimate the effects by comparing the control and treatment group outcomes. Here is what we found:

For students who met the performance requirements, the program increased graduation from two-year colleges by 3 percentage points . This might seem small, but the denominator here is comprised of low-income 9 th graders. Half of the control group did not even graduate from high school, let alone college. The effect amounts to a 25% increase in two-year degrees.
The framing and design of the program as free two-year college changed student decisions in ways consistent with what free college advocates suggest. The $12,000 maximum award amount was selected because it was sufficient to cover tuition and fees for a two-year college degree. The fact that TDP made two-year college free, but only reduced the cost of four-year college, was clearly communicated to students. This appears to explain one of our main results: Student enrollments shifted from four-year to two-year colleges. This is noteworthy given that students could use the funds at either two- or four-year colleges. In fact, students likely would have been able to use more of the $12,000 if they had shifted to four-year colleges. The only plausible reason for shifting to two-year colleges is that they were really attracted to the idea of free college.
The “early commitment” nature of the program had some modest positive effects on some high school outcomes . Students learned about TDP in their 9 th grade year, giving them time to change their high school behaviors and college plans. Although it did not improve high school academic achievement, we find that TDP increased college expectations and the steps students took to prepare for college. TDP recipients also reported working harder because of the program (even though this did not show up in the academic measures). This highlights the fact that free college might also help address not only college-going rates, but the long-term stagnancy in high school outcomes.
The merit requirements undermined the program’s effectiveness . Though the 2.5 GPA and 90% attendance and other requirements were arguably modest, only 21% of eligible students ended up meeting them. So, they ended up excluding many students. We also tested the two main ways that the merit requirements could have been helpful: (a) merit requirements might provide incentives for students to work hard during high school and better prepare for college, and (b) merit requirements might target aid to students who respond to it most. We find no evidence of either benefit. While students did work harder (see point [3] above), this appears to be due to other elements of the program, not the merit requirements.

Overall, these results suggest that aid is most effective when it is “open access”—that is, aid with early commitment and free college framing, but no merit requirements.

What about the evidence beyond Milwaukee?

Our study also reviews other research on financial aid, including federal aid, state merit aid programs, and the newer “promise scholarship” programs that mimic free college. Our study is not alone in finding that financial aid improves student outcomes. In fact, the vast majority of the most rigorous studies find positive effects on college attendance and college graduation. Given the strong average benefits of college, we can expect follow-up studies to show effects on employment earnings, voting, and other outcomes.

What about the costs? Open access aid is more expensive to be sure. More students receive aid and the aid levels per students are larger than traditional financial aid. Is it worth it? Our analysis suggests it is. We carried out new cost-benefit analyses of multiple programs, including TDP, but also other actively studied programs in: Kalamazoo, Michigan; Knox County, Tennessee; Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and one statewide program in Nebraska. We also used estimates of the average effects of aid taken from prior literature reviews. All of these programs pass a cost-benefit test. That is, the effects on college outcomes, and the effects of college outcomes on future earnings, is much larger than the cost to the government and society as a whole. Moreover, it appears that benefits-per-dollar-of-cost are at least as high with open access aid as with more restricted programs. This means that open access aid provides greater total benefits to the community as a whole.

Back to the Free College Proposals

What do these results mean for President Biden’s and CP’s proposals? The table below provides a side-by-side comparison. The main difference is the level of detail. This reflects that the CP plan was designed to align with, and flesh out, the Biden campaign proposal. Perhaps the only substantive difference is that the CP proposal (and the Milwaukee program) includes private colleges. The Biden campaign documents exclude private colleges, though the American Families Plan just says “free community college,” signaling alignment with the CP plan. Both proposals are clearly in the category of open access aid.

	Biden Campaign Proposal	College Promise
Student eligibility	· 2y college: No income requirements · 4y college: Family AGI < $125,000	· 2y college: No income requirements · 4y college: Family AGI < $125,000 · Complete FAFSA · Part-time or full-time · Work requirements optional · State requirements on students “kept to a minimum”
College eligibility	· Public only	· Public and private · Title IV eligible · Meet accountability requirements based on College Scorecard
State-Federal Contributions	· 67% of costs from the federal government	· Public colleges: Federal govt contributes 75% of partnership funds; 25% from states · Private colleges: Partnership covers up to 50% of the cost per credit (capped at state avg cost per credit in public colleges); institutions cover remainder
Other		· First-dollar (covers more than tuition and fees for some very-low-income students)

There are numerous similarities between these provisions and the Milwaukee program that my team and I studied. All three programs make two-year college free (or nearly so) for all students without income requirements and through early commitment of aid. All three require the FAFSA and high school graduation. Importantly, unlike both the Biden and CP proposals, the Milwaukee program had merit requirements, which undermined its success. This is partly why our evidence is so relevant to the current debate.

Some might wonder why the president has scaled back the proposal to just free community college. This reflects that the idea of free college—even the “scaled back” version—is such a marked departure from past policy, especially at the federal level. Free community college alone would still be arguably the largest shift in federal higher education policy in the past half-century.

Caveats and Concluding Thoughts

We cannot make policy from evidence alone, but it can and should play a key role. Sometimes, policy ideas have such limited evidence of effectiveness that it is difficult to make any plausible case for a large-scale, national program. In other cases, there is enough promise for pilot studies and competitive grants to establish efficacy. With free college, we seem to be well beyond that point. In addition to decades of results on general financial aid programs, we have a growing number of studies on state and local programs that all show positive evidence—the “laboratory of democracy” at work. The idea of a large, federal free-college program therefore has more and more credibility.

A decade ago, it was not at all obvious that this is what the evidence would show. There was really no evidence on free college programs when we started this project back in 2009. Also, there were good reasons to expect that such a large increase in aid would suffer from “diminishing returns”—the idea that the next dollar is less effective than the previous one. This could have made free college more costly than the benefits could justify. Now, we know better.

I do still worry a bit about other factors and challenges. For example, the above analyses can only capture the immediate effects of financial aid, yet a federal free college program is such a marked departure in policy that it could alter political and market forces operating on higher education in unpredictable ways, perhaps even lowering college spending and quality. Also, if the proposal remains focused on community colleges, then this will shift students out of four-year colleges and into colleges that currently have very low completion rates. There are also other ways to increase college affordability and access that do not require free college (e.g., increased Pell Grants and income-based loan repayment), some of which target funds more narrowly to the most disadvantaged students. And there are many details to be worked out as the president’s allies in Congress try to generate sufficient support without (a) sacrificing core principles, or (b) creating new problems that can arise when grafting new federal programs on to widely varying state contexts.

Still, it is not often that an idea comes around that addresses a widely acknowledged problem and has both research support and a fair degree of bipartisan political support. The stars seem aligned to make some form of national free college a reality. The more evidence we see, the more that would seem to be a step forward.

Free Education: Origins, Achievements, and Current Situation

Reference work entry
First Online: 01 January 2020
Cite this reference work entry

Michael M. Kretzer 6

Part of the book series: Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals ((ENUNSDG))

375 Accesses

1 Citations

Free Education is defined as the abolishment of school fees. In general, two types of fees exist. Firstly, direct fees or costs such as tuition fees or textbook fees and so on, which means they are spent directly on education. Secondly, indirect fees or costs, which are not directly used for educational purposes, but are a necessity, such as travel expenses to school. There is, however, no consensus about a definition of Free Education or Free Primary Education (FPE), as the predominantly used terminology are used equivalent (Inoue and Oketch 2008 : 44). Free Education is mainly seen as FPE and includes the abolishment of tuition or textbook fees (UNESCO 2002 ). Hence, Free Education is limited most of the time to primary schools and the abolishment of direct fees, but it does not mean a totally free and cost-free education for parents. Research has shown that the best is to lower the direct and the indirect costs for education, as this increases the chances of children being...

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Subscribe and save.

Get 10 units per month
Download Article/Chapter or eBook
1 Unit = 1 Article or 1 Chapter
Cancel anytime
Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Durable hardcover edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Ahmed R, Sayed Y (2009) Promoting access and enhancing education opportunities? The case of ‘no-fees schools’ in South Africa. Compare 39(2):203–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057920902750467

Article Google Scholar

Akaguri L (2014) Fee-free public or low-fee private basic education in rural Ghana: how does the cost influence the choice of the poor? Compare 44(2):140–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2013.796816

Akyeampong K (2009) Revisiting Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education (FCUBE) in Ghana. Comp Educ 45(2):175–195. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060902920534

Al-Samarrai S, Zaman H (2007) Abolishing school fees in Malawi: the impact on education access and equity. Educ Econ 15(3):359–375. https://doi.org/10.1080/09645290701273632

Altbach PG, Klemencic M (2014) Student activism remains a potent force worldwide. Int High Educ 76:2–3

Google Scholar

Booysen S (2016) Fees must fall. Student revolt, decolonisation and governance in South Africa. Wits University Press, Johannesburg

Botha RJ(N) (2002) Outcomes-based education and educational reform in South Africa. Int J Leadersh Educ 5(4):S. 361–S. 371. https://doi.org/10.1080/13603120110118831

Bray M, Kwo O (2013) Behind the façade of fee-free education: shadow education and its implications for social justice. Oxf Rev Educ 39(4):480–497. https://doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2013.821852

Cabalin C (2012) Neoliberal education and student movements in Chile: inequalities and malaise. Policy Futures Educ 10(2):219–228. https://doi.org/10.2304/pfie.2012.10.2.219

Chimombo J (2009) Changing patterns of access to basic education in Malawi: a story of a mixed bag? Comp Educ 45(2):297–312. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060902921003

de los Arcos B, Weller M (2018) A tale of two globes: exploring the north/south divide in engagement with open educational resources. In: Schöpfel J, Herb U (eds) Open divide: critical studies on open access. Litwin Books, Sacramento, pp 147–155

Department of Education (2006) Education on no fee schools 2007. https://www.gov.za/education-no-fee-schools-2007

Dzama E (2006) Malawian secondary school students learning of science: historical background, performance and beliefs. PhD thesis, University of Western Cape

Haßler B, Jackson AM (2010) Bridging the bandwidth gap: open educational resources and the digital divide. IEEE Trans Learn Technol 3(2):110–115. https://doi.org/10.1109/TLT.2010.8

Inoue K, Oketch M (2008) Implementing free primary education policy in Malawi and Ghana: equity and efficiency analysis. Peabody J Educ 83(1):41–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/01619560701649158

Kadzamira EC et al. (2009) Review of the planning and implementation of free primary education in Malawi. In: Birger Frederiksen /Dina Craissati Abolishing school fees in Africa. Lessons from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Mozambique. World Bank, Washington, pp 161–202

Kayambazinthu E (1999) The language planning situation in Malawi. In: Kapman R, Baldauf R (eds) Language planning in Malawi, Mozambique and the Philippine. Multilingual Matters, Sydney, pp 15–86

Kendall N (2007) Education for all meets political democratization: free primary education and the neoliberalization of the Malawian school and state. Comp Educ Rev 51(3):281–305

Kosack S (2009) Realising education for all: defining and using the political will to invest in primary education. Comp Educ 45(4):495–523. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060903391586

Kretzer MM (2016) Chancen und Grenzen von “Agriculture” als Schulfach für eine nachhaltige Lebensführung. Fallstudie Karonga, Nkahata Bay und Mzimba Distrikt in Malawi. In: Engler S, Bommert W, Stengel O (eds) Regional, innovativ und gesund – Nachhaltige Ernährung als Teil der großen transformation. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen, pp 243–261

Chapter Google Scholar

Kretzer MM (2018) Implementierungspotential der Sprachenpolitik im Bildungssystem Südafrikas. Eine Untersuchung in den Provinzen Gauteng, Limpopo und North West. [Potential of the implementation of language policy in the education system of South Africa: case study of Gauteng, Limpopo and North West Province]. Unpublished PhD thesis, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen

Kretzer MM, Kaschula RH (2019) (Unused) potentials of educators’ covert language policies at public schools in Limpopo, South Africa. Curr Issues Lang Plann. https://doi.org/10.1080/14664208.2019.1641349

Kretzer MM, Engler S, Gondwe J, Trost E (2017) Fighting resource scarcity – sustainability in the education system of Malawi – case study of Karonga, Mzimba and Nkhata Bay district. S Afr Geogr J 99(3):235–251. https://doi.org/10.1080/03736245.2016.1231624

Lewin KM (2011) Policy dialogue and target setting: do current indicators of education for all signify progress? J Educ Policy 26(4):571–587. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2011.555003

Matear A (2008) English language learning and education policy in Chile: can English really open doors for all? Asia Pac J Educ 28(2):131–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/02188790802036679

Ministry of Education and Culture Republic of Indonesia, Kementerian Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan (2003) Act of the Republic of Indonesia Number 20, Year 2003 on National Education System. https://planipolis.iiep.unesco.org/sites/planipolis/files/ressources/indonesia_education_act.pdf

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2018) Chile. Overview of the education system (EAG 2018). http://gpseducation.oecd.org/CountryProfile?primaryCountry=CHL&treshold=10&topic=EO

Papua New Guinea Department of Education (2012) Report on the implementation of the Tuition Fee Free (TFF) policy. https://www.education.gov.pg/documents/TFF%20Policy%20Report.pdf

Rosser A, Joshi A (2013) From user fees to fee free: the politics of realising universal free basic education in Indonesia. J Dev Stud 49(2):175–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2012.671473

SADC (1997) Protocol on education and training. https://www.sadc.int/files/3813/5292/8362/Protocol_on_Education__Training1997.pdf

SADC (2012) Education & skills development. https://www.sadc.int/themes/social-human-development/education-skills-development/

Salisbury T (2016) Education and inequality in South Africa: returns to schooling in the post-apartheid era. Int J Educ Dev 46:43–52. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.07.004

Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) (2011) SACMEQ III main report, 2011, S55. http://www.sacmeq.org/sites/default/files/sacmeq/reports/sacmeq-iii/national-reports/mal_sacmeq_iii_report-_final.pdf

Spaull N (2013) Poverty & privilege: primary school inequality in South Africa. Int J Educ Dev 33:436–447. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2012.00.009

Statistics South Africa (2017) Education series volume III. Educational enrolment and achievement, 2016. http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/Report%2092-01-03/Report%2092-01-032016.pdf

Stromquist NP, Sanyal A (2013) Student resistance to neoliberalism in Chile. Int Stud Sociol Educ 23(2):152–178. https://doi.org/10.1080/09620214.2013.790662

Takayama K, Sriprakash A, Connell R (2016) Toward a postcolonial comparative and international education. Comp Educ Rev 61(S1):S1–S24, 010-4086/2017/61S1-0001

Tooley J, Dixon P (2006) ‘De facto’ privatisation of education and the poor: implications of a study from sub-Saharan Africa and India. Compare 36(4):443–462. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057920601024891

UNESCO (2002) Education for All: is the world on track? EFA global monitoring report. Available at: https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000129053

UNESCO (2007) Education for all by 2015: will we make it? Global monitoring report. https://www.unicef.org/easterncaribbean/spmapping/Implementation/ECD/2008_EFA_Global_Report.pdf

UNESCO (2014) EFA global monitoring report 2013/4 – Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000225660

UNESCO (2015) EFA global monitoring report. Education for all 2000–2015: Achievements and challenges. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232205

UNESCO (2018) Global education monitoring report. Migration, displacement and education: building bridges, not walls. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000265866/PDF/265866eng.pdf.multi

UNESCO Institute of Statistics (2019) Sustainable development goals. Browse by country. http://uis.unesco.org/en/country/id?theme=education-and-literacy

UNESCO TCG (2016) Working group 1: indicator development. Terms of reference. http://tcg.uis.unesco.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/2018/08/TCG_WG1_ToR_20170901.pdf

United Nations General Assembly (1966) International covenant on economic, social and cultural rights. https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/CESCR.aspx

United Nations General Assembly (1989) Convention on the rights of the child. https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx

University of Minnesota (1980) Constitution of the republic of Chile. http://hrlibrary.umn.edu/research/chile-constitution.pdf

University of Oslo (2002) SAARC convention on regional arrangements for the promotion of child welfare in South Asia. https://www.jus.uio.no/english/services/library/treaties/02/2-05/child-welfare-asia.xml

Walton GW (2019) Fee-free education, decentralisation and the politics of scale in Papua New Guinea. J Educ Policy 34(2):174–194. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017.1422027

WCEFA (World Conference on Education for All) (1990) World declaration on education for all. http://www.unesco.org/education/pdf/JOMTIE_E.PDF

Webb A, Radcliffe S (2016) Unfulfilled promises of equity: racism and interculturalism in Chilean education. Race Ethn Educ 19(6):1335–1350. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2015.1095173

Zuilkowski SS, Samanhudi U, Indriana I (2019) ‘There is no free education nowadays’: youth explanations for school dropout in Indonesia. Compare 49(1):16–29. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2017.1369002

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Languages and Literatures (African Language Studies Section), Rhodes University, Grahamstown/Makhanda, South Africa

Michael M. Kretzer

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Michael M. Kretzer .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

European School of Sustainability Science and Research, Hamburg University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg, Germany

Walter Leal Filho

Center for Neuroscience and Cell Biology, Institute for Interdisciplinary Research, University of Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal

Anabela Marisa Azul

Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Passo Fundo University, Passo Fundo, Brazil

Luciana Brandli

Istinye University, Istanbul, Turkey

Pinar Gökçin Özuyar

University of Chester, Chester, UK

Section Editor information

Rights and permissions.

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this entry

Cite this entry.

Kretzer, M.M. (2020). Free Education: Origins, Achievements, and Current Situation. In: Leal Filho, W., Azul, A.M., Brandli, L., Özuyar, P.G., Wall, T. (eds) Quality Education. Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95870-5_93

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95870-5_93

Published : 04 April 2020

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-319-95869-9

Online ISBN : 978-3-319-95870-5

eBook Packages : Earth and Environmental Science Reference Module Physical and Materials Science Reference Module Earth and Environmental Sciences

Share this entry

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

RSS feed Facebook Twitter Donate Share -->

News & blog
Monitoring guide
Education as a right
United Nations
Humanitarian Law
International Human Rights Mechanisms
Inter-American
Regional Human Rights Mechanisms
What information to look at
Where to find information
Comparative Table on Minimum Age Legislation
Adult education & learning
Education 2030
Education Financing
Education in Emergencies
Educational Freedoms
Early Childhood Care and Education

Free Education

Higher education
Technology in education
Justiciability
Marginalised Groups
Minimum Age
Privatisation of Education
Quality Education
News and blog

Free primary education is fundamental in guaranteeing everyone has access to education. However, in many developing countries, families often cannot afford to send their children to school, leaving millions of children of school-age deprived of education. Despite international obligations, some states keep on imposing fees to access primary education. In addition, there are often indirect costs associated with education, such as for school books, uniform or travel, that prevent children from low-income families accessing school.

Financial difficulties states may face cannot relieve them of their obligation to guarantee free primary education. If a state is unable to secure compulsory primary education, free of charge, when it ratifies the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966), it still has the immediate obligation, within two years, to work out and adopt a detailed plan of action for its progressive implementation, within a reasonable numbers of years, to be fixed in the plan (ICESCR, Article 14). For more information, see General Comment 11 (1999) of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

'Progressive introduction of free education' means that while states must prioritise the provision of free primary education, they also have an obligation to take concrete steps towards achieving free secondary and higher education ( General Comment 13 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, 1999: Para. 14).

Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948, Article 26)
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966, Articles 13 and 14)
Convention on the Rights of the Child (1982, Article 28)
Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (1979, Article 10)
Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2006, Article 24)
UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960, Articles 4)
ILO Worst Forms of Child Labour Convention (1999, Preamble, Articles 7 and 8)
African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child (1990, Article 11)
African Youth Charter (2006, Articles 13 and 16)
Charter of the Organisation of American States (1967, Article 49)
Additional Protocol to the American Convention on Human Rights, Protocol of San Salvador (1988, Article 13)
Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union (2000, Article 14)
European Social Charter (revised) (1996, Articles 10 and 17)
Arab Charter on Human Rights (2004, Article 41)
ASEAN Human Rights Declaration (2012, Article 31)

For more details, see International Instruments - Free and Compulsory Education

The following case-law on free education includes decisions of national, regional and international courts as well as decisions from national administrative bodies, national human rights institutions and international human rights bodies.

Claim of unconstitutionality against article 183 of the General Education Law (Colombia Constitutional Court; 2010)

Other issues.

Adult education and learning; literacy, lifelong learning, right to education, older persons, technical and vocational education and training, higher education, sdg4, fundamental education, basic education

A Guarantee of Tuition-Free College Can Have Life-Changing Effects

A mailer sent to low-income students with that promise led to a major jump in enrollment at the University of Michigan, according to a new study.

Highly selective colleges have long struggled with racial and economic diversity. At 38 such institutions in the United States , more students come from households in the top 1 percent than from those in the bottom 60 percent. That is in part due to who applies to the universities: Many high-achieving students from a low-income or minority background don’t think they can get in to a prestigious institution, let alone pay for it—despite the fact that many such colleges have generous financial-aid packages—so they end up not applying.

A new study , however, found that a few extra dollars on a university’s part might go a long way in terms of changing that calculus for low-income students. The working paper, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research, examined the effects of a targeted-outreach campaign for low-income students at the University of Michigan.

Read: The missing black students at elite American universities

The campaign, known as the High Achieving Involved Leader ( HAIL ) Scholarship, encourages highly qualified, low-income students to apply to the university, promising them four years of education free of tuition and fees. Students are sent a personalized mailing with all of the information, which costs the university less than $10 each to produce and send out; the students’ parents and school principals are also contacted separately. And the offer of free tuition isn’t contingent upon filling out financial-aid forms such as the Free Application for Federal Student Aid ( FAFSA ).

The researchers, led by the University of Michigan economist Susan Dynarski, found “very large effects of the HAIL scholarship offer on application and enrollment rates at the University of Michigan and more generally on college choice.” Students who received the mailing were more than twice as likely to apply to the University of Michigan compared with a control group. The percentage of low-income students enrolling at the university more than doubled as well—from 13 percent in the control group to 28 percent in the group of students who received the mailer.

The HAIL Scholarship is a new program, but even without it the students would likely have been able to attend the University of Michigan free of charge—90 percent of similarly situated high-achieving, low-income students receive full-tuition scholarships. But HAIL makes that fact explicit: It isn’t that students can apply and have the chance to afford the college—if they apply and are accepted, it is guaranteed .

The study shows one way to tackle the phenomenon known as “ undermatching ,” which is when high-achieving students don’t attend the most selective college they could get into. It’s something researchers have studied and worried about for several years now, since it tends to occur most frequently among low-income students. While it has been argued that there’s too much attention being focused on getting low-income students into a small number of elite colleges, as I’ve previously written, students who undermatch are less likely to graduate than their peers who don’t, and they forgo a range of social benefits accrued from attending an elite college.

Read: When disadvantaged students overlook elite colleges

In some cases, the students enrolling at Michigan wouldn’t have gone to college at all had they not had been contacted. “One-quarter of the enrollment effect (four percentage points) is driven by students who would not have attended any college in the absence of the treatment,” the authors of the report wrote. “The balance would have attended a community college or a less selective four-year college in the absence of the treatment.”

For the researchers, the next step in evaluating the program is to track its effects on students’ choice of major, graduation rates, and, in the long term, lifetime earnings. But for now, the results “show that a low-cost, low-touch intervention can strongly affect student application and enrollment at selective colleges.”

This is the second study in the past week showing the positive effects of a guarantee for low-income and minority students. A study published by the American Educational Research Association found that undermatching is reduced when low-income students know that their admission is ensured through state policy. The study examined the University of Texas system and its “top 10 percent plan,” which guarantees admission to students in the top 10 percent of their high-school class.

In both the Michigan and Texas studies, the students were given clear information that going to college—and to an elite college, at that—was a real possibility. As Kalena Cortes, an associate professor at Texas A&M and one of the Texas study’s authors, said , “Demystifying college-admissions policy is a pathway to greater inclusion.”

About the Author

What you need to know about the right to education

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights affirms that education is a fundamental human right for everyone and this right was further detailed in the Convention against Discrimination in Education. What exactly does that mean?

Why is education a fundamental human right?

The right to education is a human right and indispensable for the exercise of other human rights.

Quality education aims to ensure the development of a fully-rounded human being.
It is one of the most powerful tools in lifting socially excluded children and adults out of poverty and into society. UNESCO data shows that if all adults completed secondary education, globally the number of poor people could be reduced by more than half.
It narrows the gender gap for girls and women. A UN study showed that each year of schooling reduces the probability of infant mortality by 5 to 10 per cent.
For this human right to work there must be equality of opportunity, universal access, and enforceable and monitored quality standards.

What does the right to education entail?

Primary education that is free, compulsory and universal
Secondary education, including technical and vocational, that is generally available, accessible to all and progressively free
Higher education, accessible to all on the basis of individual capacity and progressively free
Fundamental education for individuals who have not completed education
Professional training opportunities
Equal quality of education through minimum standards
Quality teaching and supplies for teachers
Adequate fellowship system and material condition for teaching staff
Freedom of choice

What is the current situation?

About 258 million children and youth are out of school, according to UIS data for the school year ending in 2018. The total includes 59 million children of primary school age, 62 million of lower secondary school age and 138 million of upper secondary age.

155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education

Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education
8.2% of primary school age children does not go to primary school Only six in ten young people will be finishing secondary school in 2030 The youth literacy rate (15-24) is of 91.73%, meaning 102 million youth lack basic literacy skills.

How is the right to education ensured?

The right to education is established by two means - normative international instruments and political commitments by governments. A solid international framework of conventions and treaties exist to protect the right to education and States that sign up to them agree to respect, protect and fulfil this right.

How does UNESCO work to ensure the right to education?

UNESCO develops, monitors and promotes education norms and standards to guarantee the right to education at country level and advance the aims of the Education 2030 Agenda. It works to ensure States' legal obligations are reflected in national legal frameworks and translated into concrete policies.

Monitoring the implementation of the right to education at country level
Supporting States to establish solid national frameworks creating the legal foundation and conditions for sustainable quality education for all
Advocating on the right to education principles and legal obligations through research and studies on key issues
Maintaining global online tools on the right to education
Enhancing capacities, reporting mechanisms and awareness on key challenges
Developing partnerships and networks around key issues

How is the right to education monitored and enforced by UNESCO?

UNESCO's Constitution requires Member States to regularly report on measures to implement standard-setting instruments at country level through regular consultations.
Through collaboration with UN human rights bodies, UNESCO addresses recommendations to countries to improve the situation of the right to education at national level.
Through the dedicated online Observatory , UNESCO takes stock of the implementation of the right to education in 195 States.
Through its interactive Atlas , UNESCO monitors the implementation right to education of girls and women in countries
Based on its monitoring work, UNESCO provides technical assistance and policy advice to Member States that seek to review, develop, improve and reform their legal and policy frameworks.

What happens if States do not fulfil obligations?

International human rights instruments have established a solid normative framework for the right to education. This is not an empty declaration of intent as its provisions are legally binding. All countries in the world have ratified at least one treaty covering certain aspects of the right to education. This means that all States are held to account, through legal mechanisms.
Enforcement of the right to education: At international level, human rights' mechanisms are competent to receive individual complaints and have settled right to education breaches this way.
Justiciability of the right to education: Where their right to education has been violated, citizens must be able to have legal recourse before the law courts or administrative tribunals.

What are the major challenges to ensure the right to education?

Providing free and compulsory education to all
155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education.
Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education.
Eliminating inequalities and disparities in education

While only 4% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school in low-income countries, 36% of the richest do. In lower-middle-income countries, the gap is even wider: while only 14% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school, 72% of the richest do.

Migration and displacement

According to a 2019 UNHCR report, of the 7.1 million refugee children of school age, 3.7 million - more than half - do not go to school.

Privatization and its impact on the right to education

States need to strike a balance between educational freedom and ensuring everyone receives a quality education.

Financing of education

The Education 2030 Agenda requires States to allocate at least 4-6 per cent of GDP and/or at least 15-20 per cent of public expenditure to education.

Quality imperatives and valuing the teaching profession

Two-thirds of the estimated 617 million children and adolescents who cannot read a simple sentence or manage a basic mathematics calculation are in the classroom.

Say no to discrimination in education! - #RightToEducation campaign

More on this subject

System Strengthening Partnership with Jordan’s Ministry of Education Programme

HerAtlas: Monitoring the right to education for girls and women HerAtlas: Background, rationale and objectives 12 March 2024

Other recent news

UNICEF and UNESCO call for respecting children's right to education in Haiti amidst escalating insecurity and socio-political instability

Music education sets up low-income youth for success

Should cell phones be banned from all California schools?

New school year brings new education laws

How earning a college degree put four California men on a path from prison to new lives | Documentary

Patrick Acuña’s journey from prison to UC Irvine | Video

Family reunited after four years separated by Trump-era immigration policy

Getting Students Back to School

Calling the cops: Policing in California schools

Black teachers: How to recruit them and make them stay

Lessons in Higher Education: California and Beyond

Superintendents: Well paid and walking away

Keeping California public university options open

August 28, 2024

Getting students back to school: Addressing chronic absenteeism

July 25, 2024

Adult education: Overlooked and underfunded

College & Careers

Tuition-free college is critical to our economy

Morley Winograd and Max Lubin

November 2, 2020, 13 comments.

To rebuild America’s economy in a way that offers everyone an equal chance to get ahead, federal support for free college tuition should be a priority in any economic recovery plan in 2021.

Research shows that the private and public economic benefit of free community college tuition would outweigh the cost. That’s why half of the states in the country already have some form of free college tuition.

The Democratic Party 2020 platform calls for making two years of community college tuition free for all students with a federal/state partnership similar to the Obama administration’s 2015 plan .

It envisions a program as universal and free as K-12 education is today, with all the sustainable benefits such programs (including Social Security and Medicare) enjoy. It also calls for making four years of public college tuition free, again in partnership with states, for students from families making less than $125,000 per year.

The Republican Party didn’t adopt a platform for the 2020 election, deferring to President Trump’s policies, which among other things, stand in opposition to free college. Congressional Republicans, unlike many of their state counterparts, also have not supported free college tuition in the past.

However, it should be noted that the very first state free college tuition program was initiated in 2015 by former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, a Republican. Subsequently, such deep red states with Republican majorities in their state legislature such as West Virginia, Kentucky and Arkansas have adopted similar programs.

Establishing free college tuition benefits for more Americans would be the 21st-century equivalent of the Depression-era Works Progress Administration initiative.

That program not only created immediate work for the unemployed, but also offered skills training for nearly 8 million unskilled workers in the 1930s. Just as we did in the 20th century, by laying the foundation for our current system of universal free high school education and rewarding our World War II veterans with free college tuition to help ease their way back into the workforce, the 21st century system of higher education we build must include the opportunity to attend college tuition-free.

California already has taken big steps to make its community college system, the largest in the nation, tuition free by fully funding its California Promise grant program. But community college is not yet free to all students. Tuition costs — just more than $1,500 for a full course load — are waived for low-income students. Colleges don’t have to spend the Promise funds to cover tuition costs for other students so, at many colleges, students still have to pay tuition.

At the state’s four-year universities, about 60% of students at the California State University and the same share of in-state undergraduates at the 10-campus University of California, attend tuition-free as well, as a result of Cal grants , federal Pell grants and other forms of financial aid.

But making the CSU and UC systems tuition-free for even more students will require funding on a scale that only the federal government is capable of supporting, even if the benefit is only available to students from families that makes less than $125,000 a year.

It is estimated that even without this family income limitation, eliminating tuition for four years at all public colleges and universities for all students would cost taxpayers $79 billion a year, according to U.S. Department of Education data . Consider, however, that the federal government spent $91 billion in 2016 on policies that subsidized college attendance. At least some of that could be used to help make public higher education institutions tuition-free in partnership with the states.

Free college tuition programs have proved effective in helping mitigate the system’s current inequities by increasing college enrollment, lowering dependence on student loan debt and improving completion rates , especially among students of color and lower-income students who are often the first in their family to attend college.

In the first year of the TN Promise , community college enrollment in Tennessee increased by 24.7%, causing 4,000 more students to enroll. The percentage of Black students in that state’s community college population increased from 14% to 19% and the proportion of Hispanic students increased from 4% to 5%.

Students who attend community college tuition-free also graduate at higher rates. Tennessee’s first Promise student cohort had a 52.6% success rate compared to only a 38.9% success rate for their non-Promise peers. After two years of free college tuition, Rhode Island’s college-promise program saw its community college graduation rate triple and the graduation rate among students of color increase ninefold.

The impact on student debt is more obvious. Tennessee, for instance, saw its applications for student loans decrease by 17% in the first year of its program, with loan amounts decreasing by 12%. At the same time, Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) applications soared, with 40% of the entire nation’s increase in applications originating in that state in the first year of their Promise program.

Wage inequality by education, already dreadful before the pandemic, is getting worse. In May, the unemployment rate among workers without a high school diploma was nearly triple the rate of workers with a bachelor’s degree. No matter what Congress does to provide support to those affected by the pandemic and the ensuing recession, employment prospects for far too many people in our workforce will remain bleak after the pandemic recedes. Today, the fastest growing sectors of the economy are in health care, computers and information technology. To have a real shot at a job in those sectors, workers need a college credential of some form such as an industry-recognized skills certificate or an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.

The surest way to make the proven benefits of higher education available to everyone is to make college tuition-free for low and middle-income students at public colleges, and the federal government should help make that happen.

Morley Winograd is president of the Campaign for Free College Tuition . Max Lubin is CEO of Rise , a student-led nonprofit organization advocating for free college.

The opinions in this commentary are those of the author. Commentaries published on EdSource represent diverse viewpoints about California’s public education systems. If you would like to submit a commentary, please review our guidelines and contact us .

Comments (13)

Leave a comment, your email address will not be published. required fields are marked * *.

Click here to cancel reply.

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

Comments Policy

We welcome your comments. All comments are moderated for civility, relevance and other considerations. Click here for EdSource's Comments Policy .

Genia Curtsinger 2 years ago 2 years ago

Making community college free to those who meet the admission requirements would help many people. First of all, it would make it easy for students and families, for instance; you go to college and have to pay thousands of dollars to get a college education, but if community college is free it would help so you could be saving money and get a college education for free, with no cost at all. It would make … Read More

Therefore I think people should have free education for those who meet the admission requirements.

nothing 3 years ago 3 years ago

I feel like colleges shouldn’t be completely free, but a lot more affordable for people so everyone can have a chance to have a good college education.

Jaden Wendover 3 years ago 3 years ago

I think all colleges should be free, because why would you pay to learn?

Samantha Cole 3 years ago 3 years ago

I think college should be free because there are a lot of people that want to go to college but they can’t pay for it so they don’t go and end up in jail or working as a waitress or in a convenience store. I know I want to go to college but I can’t because my family doesn’t make enough money to send me to college but my family makes too much for financial aid.

Nick Gurrs 3 years ago 3 years ago

I feel like this subject has a lot of answers, For me personally, I believe tuition and college, in general, should be free because it will help students get out of debt and not have debt, and because it will help people who are struggling in life to get a job and make a living off a job.

NO 3 years ago 3 years ago

I think college tuition should be free. A lot of adults want to go to college and finish their education but can’t partly because they can’t afford to. Some teens need to work at a young age just so they can save money for college which I feel they shouldn’t have to. If people don’t want to go to college then they just can work and go on with their lives.

Not saying my name 3 years ago 3 years ago

I think college tuition should be free because people drop out because they can’t pay the tuition to get into college and then they can’t graduate and live a good life and they won’t get a job because it says they dropped out of school. So it would be harder to get a job and if the tuition wasn’t a thing, people would live an awesome life because of this.

Brisa 3 years ago 3 years ago

I’m not understanding. Are we not agreeing that college should be free, or are we?

m 3 years ago 3 years ago

it shouldnt

Trevor Everhart 3 years ago 3 years ago

What do you mean by there is no such thing as free tuition?

Olga Snichernacs 4 years ago 4 years ago

Nice! I enjoyed reading.

Anonymous Cat 4 years ago 4 years ago

Tuition-Free: Free tuition, or sometimes tuition free is a phrase you have heard probably a good number of times. … Therefore, free tuition to put it simply is the opportunity provide to students by select universities around the world to received a degree from their institution without paying any sum of money for the teaching.

Mister B 4 years ago 4 years ago

There is no such thing as tuition free.

EdSource Special Reports

California School Dashboard lacks pandemic focus, earns a D grade in report

The California School Dashboard makes it hard for the public to see how schools and districts are performing over multiple years, concludes the report’s lead author.

Communication with parents is key to addressing chronic absenteeism, panel says

Low-cost, scalable engagement through texting and post cards can make a huge difference in getting students back in the habit of attending classes.

Helping students with mental health struggles may help them return to school

In California, 1 in 4 students are chronically absent putting them academically behind. A new USC study finds links between absenteeism and mental health struggles.

Millions of kids are still skipping school. Could the answer be recess — and a little cash?

Data gathered from over 40 states shows absenteeism improved slightly but remains above pre-pandemic levels. School leaders are trying various strategies to get students back to school.

EdSource in your inbox!

Stay ahead of the latest developments on education in California and nationally from early childhood to college and beyond. Sign up for EdSource’s no-cost daily email.

Stay informed with our daily newsletter

SUGGESTED TOPICS
The Magazine
Newsletters
Managing Yourself
Managing Teams
Work-life Balance
The Big Idea
Data & Visuals
Case Selections
HBR Learning
Topic Feeds
Account Settings
Email Preferences

Should Higher Education Be Free?

Vijay Govindarajan
Jatin Desai

Disruptive new models offer an alternative to expensive tuition.

In the United States, our higher education system is broken. Since 1980, we’ve seen a 400% increase in the cost of higher education, after adjustment for inflation — a higher cost escalation than any other industry, even health care. We have recently passed the trillion dollar mark in student loan debt in the United States.

Vijay Govindarajan is the Coxe Distinguished Professor at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business, a Dartmouth-wide chair and the highest distinction awarded to Dartmouth faculty, a Faculty Partner in the Silicon Valley incubator Mach49 , and a Senior Advisor at the strategy consulting firm Acropolis Advisors . He is a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author. His latest book is Fusion Strategy: How Real-Time Data and AI Will Power the Industrial Future . His Harvard Business Review articles “ Engineering Reverse Innovations ” and “ Stop the Innovation Wars ” won McKinsey Awards for best article published in HBR. His HBR articles “ How GE Is Disrupting Itself ” and “ The CEO’s Role in Business Model Reinvention ” are HBR all-time top-50 bestsellers. Follow him on LinkedIn . vgovindarajan
JD Jatin Desai is co-founder and chief executive officer of The Desai Group and the author of Innovation Engine: Driving Execution for Breakthrough Results .

Partner Center

About The Journalist’s Resource
Follow us on Facebook
Follow us on Twitter
Criminal Justice
Environment
Politics & Government
Race & Gender

Expert Commentary

‘Free-college’ and ‘tuition-free’ programs: What the research says

While many politicians argue eliminating tuition will help more Americans go to college, studies show the results of “free college” programs differ according to their scope and structure.

free community college research Democrat presidential candidates campaign policy

Republish this article

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .

by Denise-Marie Ordway, The Journalist's Resource December 12, 2019

This <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org/education/free-college-tuition-research/">article</a> first appeared on <a target="_blank" href="https://journalistsresource.org">The Journalist's Resource</a> and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.<img src="https://journalistsresource.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/cropped-jr-favicon-150x150.png" style="width:1em;height:1em;margin-left:10px;">

In the lead-up to the 2020 elections, the Journalist’s Resource team is combing through the Democratic presidential candidates’ platforms and reporting what the research says about their policy proposals. We want to encourage deep coverage of these proposals — and do our part to deter horse race journalism , which research suggests can lead to inaccurate reporting and an uninformed electorate. We’re focusing on those that have a reasonable chance of becoming federal policy if a Democrat is elected to the nation’s highest office. For us, that means at least 3 of the 5 top-polling candidates support the idea. Most candidates say they would provide “free college,” but their plans differ in terms of who would qualify to receive it and which postsecondary institutions would participate. Free-college proposals generally aim to cover either tuition or tuition and mandatory student fees.

Candidates in favor of free community college

Michael Bennet *, Joe Biden , Cory Booker *, John Delaney *, Amy Klobuchar *, Deval Patrick *, Tom Steyer *, Andrew Yang *

Candidates in favor of free public colleges and universities

Pete Buttigieg *, Julián Castro *, Tulsi Gabbard *, Bernie Sanders *, Elizabeth Warren *, Marianne Williamson *

What the research says

While politicians argue that eliminating tuition will prompt more Americans to go to college and earn degrees, academic studies find this isn’t necessarily the case. Research shows the results of so-called “free college” programs differ according to their structure and scope.

Higher education can be expensive, and tuition is one part of the overall cost. Meanwhile, most free-college and free-tuition programs take a “last dollar” approach, meaning they cover only the amount of tuition left over after a student’s grants, scholarships and other financial aid money are applied. When structured this way, these programs offer a limited financial benefit to lower-income students . Many lower-income students receive a variety of need-based financial aid, including Pell Grants from the federal government , and if they spend that money on tuition, there’s often little or no tuition left for a free-college program to pay.

“First dollar” programs, on the other hand, are applied to the cost of tuition before other forms of financial aid, allowing students to use other aid money for such things as books, housing, transportation, food, laundry and medication.

Another key difference: Local free-college programs, of which there are hundreds nationally, target different student populations. While some offer free tuition to all students graduating from high schools in a specific geographical area, others are restricted to high-achieving students, full-time students or individuals who meet certain income and work requirements .

Key context

When politicians talk about “free college,” they’re usually talking about free tuition. Yang believes community colleges “should be funded at a level to make tuition free or nearly-free for anyone,” according to his campaign website, while Williamson told The Washington Post she supports “making community colleges and state schools affordable or free.”

Tuition, however, is not the largest expense for many students attending public colleges and universities — the schools most free-college plans target. Meals and housing are generally pricier than in-state tuition at public institutions. At community colleges, in-state tuition and fees totaled $3,642 , on average, for the 2017-18 academic year, according to the National Center for Education Statistics .

Off-campus housing and meals together cost an average of $9,952 that year for community college students who didn’t live with parents or guardians. Room and board on campus averaged $6,791. The NCES and other organizations often lump together tuition and mandatory student fees — science lab fees, student activity fees and athletic fees, for example — because, combined, they represent the cost of taking college courses. The NCES, a key source of national higher education data, also reports room and board as one cost.

Prices were higher at public, four-year institutions, primarily state universities. At those institutions, in-state tuition and fees totaled $9,044 , on average, in 2017-18. Their students paid an average of $10,680 for on-campus housing and food, and $8,683 if they lived off campus but not with family.

Another key piece of context: There are so many different models of free-college programs, and the trend is still relatively new, that it’s difficult to gauge which approach is best at making higher learning more affordable and getting more Americans to and through college. Meanwhile, the number of free-college programs, also commonly referred to as “college promise” programs, continues to grow.

Nationwide, there are 420 college promise programs, according to an online database the University of Pennsylvania’s Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy created to track and study these programs. Fewer than 300 such programs existed in fall 2016, according to a study published in the Educational Researcher in 2018, led by University of Pennsylvania professor of education Laura W. Perna .

Perna and a colleague found that broad conclusions cannot be drawn from their findings, largely because these programs vary tremendously from place to place. Some pay tuition at community colleges across a region while others provide tuition at one specific state university . Some cover tuition and other expenses. Programs also differ in terms of the length of time students can participate and how they are funded — private donations or public money.

Perna and her colleagues write that their analyses “underscore the need for policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to recognize the diversity of approaches that is masked by the college promise label before drawing conclusions about the transferability of findings about one college promise program to another.”

Formative findings

Free-college and free-tuition programs have existed for decades in the U.S. but, prior to 2010, peer-reviewed research on the topic was limited. These programs became more common after the Great Recession, amid rising college tuition prices, mounting student debt and the growing need for more Americans to have a college education.

Among the first programs was The Kalamazoo Promise , created in 2005 to pay both tuition and mandatory fees for all graduates of public high schools in Kalamazoo, Michigan who enrolled at a two- or four-year public institution in Michigan. In 2015, the Tennessee legislature drew a slew of media attention after passing the Tennessee Promise law, making the state the first in the U.S. to offer free community college tuition to all its high school graduates. Since then, several states have begun offering free community college tuition to some or all of their public high school graduates, including Oregon in 2016 , New York in 2017 and California in 2019 .

In 2017, New York became the first state to offer free tuition at state universities — so long as students meet income requirements and agree to remain in New York after receiving their degrees for the same number of years they received funding.

Early research on these individual programs provides mixed results, but indicates that offering free tuition might not be enough to increase the number of Americans going to college.

For example, a study published in 2010 finds that the Kalamazoo Promise program prompted Michigan high school students to consider a wider range of public colleges than they otherwise would have. After the program’s introduction, more students sent their college-entrance exam scores to the state’s most selective public universities — Michigan State University and the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor — and two local public schools — Kalamazoo Valley Community College and Western Michigan University.

The authors noted that lower-income students responded differently than their wealthier peers. Students whose families earned less than $50,000 a year were more likely to send their test scores to Michigan State University compared with students from higher-income households. They were less likely to send their scores to the local community college, a less expensive option. “Taken together, these estimates suggest that The Promise allows test-takers who are financially constrained to consider institutions that are higher priced and more selective,” the authors write in their paper, published in the Economics of Education Review .

In 2013, researchers published what they learned from examining a similar program a community college in the Pacific Northwest introduced in fall 2007. Under its Promise Scholarship program, the school provided one year of free tuition to all students who graduated from the local public high school, which primarily served racial and ethnic minority students living in a low-income area.

The authors of the study, which appeared in the Community College Journal of Research and Practice, discovered that the percentage of high school graduates who applied to the college soared after the program’s launch. Beforehand, fewer than 10% of graduates applied. In 2008, nearly 60% did. The share of graduates who applied began to fall, though, after that first year to 53% in 2009 and 46.3% in 2010, according to the study.

Not only did more students apply to the college, more students enrolled. Just over 8% of students who graduated from the local high school in 2007 went on to take classes at the community college. Meanwhile, 23% of the Class of 2008 did. The percentage of students who matriculated at the college steadily fell, however, with 20.5% of the Class of 2009 pursuing studies at the college and 17.1% of students graduating in 2010.

The authors also find that students who received free tuition were more likely to take a second semester of classes compared with students who did not, and the overall cost of the program was relatively low. Because most students received government grants or aid that covered the entire cost of their tuition, the program cost an average of $540 a year for each enrolled student, the authors explain.

A 2014 study of a free-college program in Massachusetts finds it has “little net benefit,“ the authors write in the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics .

At the time of the analysis, the John and Abigail Adams Scholarship covered tuition at in-state, public colleges for Massachusetts high school graduates who earned test scores that exceeded multiple thresholds. The authors explain that while the Adams Scholarship improved college enrollment, it encouraged high-achieving students to attend lower-quality public institutions, resulting in depressed college graduation rates.

The program, they write, “reduces by about 200 students per year the number of colleges degrees earned by Massachusetts high school graduates. All in all, these considerations suggest the state is spending large amounts of money for little net benefit or even net harm to its students.”

Recent research

Three academic studies conducted in recent years offer additional insights into the structure and impact of free-college and free-tuition programs.

A study that appeared in 2015 in the Journal of Student Financial Aid looks at a Pittsburgh program that paid up to $20,000 in tuition over four years for students who graduated from the city’s high schools with a certain grade-point average and attendance record. The authors’ main takeaway: The program, called the Pittsburgh Promise, did not affect college enrollment.

They found that in years immediately following the program’s introduction in 2007, there was no statistically significant change in the odds that a student with the qualifying grade-point average and attendance record enrolled in college. The authors did, however, detect a small uptick in the probability of enrolling at a public university. When they looked at other schools, they learned that even though the program “made two-year schools cheaper and out-of-state schools relatively more expensive, enrollment in these schools was for the most part unaffected.”

In looking at New York’s statewide free-college program, a study published earlier this year in Education Economics concludes that it had a “negligible” effect on college enrollment within its first few years. The state’s Excelsior Scholarship offers free tuition at state-funded colleges and universities to state residents whose household incomes fall under a certain threshold. Recipients also must agree to remain in New York after college graduation for the same number of years they received the award.

That study finds that the program, at least in its early years, “created minimal to zero effects on enrollment in New York’s colleges and universities.”

The author writes that the post-graduation residency requirement might be a reason more students chose not participate in the program. “While this constraint can be interpreted as fairly lax and reasonable by some, it might be viewed by others as too stringent, considering that New York has a high average cost of living relative to other states, and that Excelsior scholars are only awarded up to $5,500 per year after all other aid resources are exhausted,” the author writes.

On the other hand, another 2019 paper finds the Kalamazoo Promise has demonstrated positive results in terms of college attendance, persistence and degree completion. To qualify for the program, which pays up to 100% of students’ tuition and fees at any public postsecondary school in Michigan, students must have attended a Kalamazoo public school continuously since ninth grade, live in and graduate from the school district and get accepted into a state college or university.

That free-college program, funded by anonymous private donors, also takes a first-dollar approach.

The authors analyzed data for students who graduated in 2003, 2004 and 2005 and compared with students who graduated in 2006 through 2013. What they learned: Kalamazoo Promise improved the odds of students enrolling in any college within six months of graduating high school by an estimated 14%. It boosted the odds of students enrolling in a four-year college by an estimated 23%.

Students took more classes, too. “We find that the cumulative number of [course] credits attempted increased by 13 percent as of two years after high school graduation, and these effects persist,” the researchers write in the paper, published in The Journal of Human Resources . “At two years out, the effects imply one additional class attempted; at four years out, they imply an additional two classes attempted.”

The authors discovered the free-college program also increased the percentage of students earning any postsecondary credential within six years of graduating high school by 10 percentage points. The proportion of racial and ethnic minorities who earned a bachelor’s degree within six years of graduating high school rose an estimated 7.4 percentage points, representing a 46% jump, according to the study. Researchers estimate the proportion of white students who received a bachelor’s degree within six years of graduating high school climbed 3 percentage points — a 7.5% bump.

Despite the improvements, the researchers note the program’s potential is limited. “As one might expect, ‘free college’ is insufficient by itself to ensure successful postsecondary education,” they write. “However, our results indicate that a simple, universal, and generous scholarship program can significantly increase educational attainment of American students. In addition, our results indicate that a simple universal scholarship can help low-income as well as non-low-income students, and therefore have broad benefits.”

Subject experts

Michelle Miller-Adams , professor of political science at Grand Valley State University and research fellow at the W.E. Upjohn Institute.

Robert Bifulco , a ssociate dean, chair and professor for the Public Administration and International Affairs Department at Syracuse University and senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research and the Education Finance and Accountability Program at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.

Celeste Carruthers , associate professor in the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee with a joint appointment in the Department of Economics and the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research.

Sarah Cohodes , associate professor of economics and education at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Joshua Goodman , associate professor of economics at Brandeis University.

Jennifer Iriti , research scientist at the Learning Research & Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lindsay Page , associate professor in psychology in education at the University of Pittsburgh School of Education and research scientist at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research & Development Center.

Laura W. Perna , professor of education and executive director of the Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy, University of Pennsylvania.

Hosung Sohn , assistant professor in the School of Public Service at Chung- Ang Unuiversity.

*Dropped out of race since publication date.

If you’re interested in free-college and tuition-free programs, please check out our tip sheet featuring University of Pennsylvania professor Laura W. Perna. She offers five tips to help journalists improve their coverage of the issue .

This image was obtained from the Flickr account of Truckee Meadows Community College and is being used under a Creative Commons license . No changes were made.

About The Author

Denise-Marie Ordway

Spring 2024

Why Free College Is Necessary

Higher education can’t solve inequality, but the debate about free college tuition does something extremely valuable. It reintroduces the concept of public good to education discourse.

Free college is not a new idea, but, with higher education costs (and student loan debt) dominating public perception, it’s one that appeals to more and more people—including me. The national debate about free, public higher education is long overdue. But let’s get a few things out of the way.

College is the domain of the relatively privileged, and will likely stay that way for the foreseeable future, even if tuition is eliminated. As of 2012, over half of the U.S. population has “some college” or postsecondary education. That category includes everything from an auto-mechanics class at a for-profit college to a business degree from Harvard. Even with such a broadly conceived category, we are still talking about just half of all Americans.

Why aren’t more people going to college? One obvious answer would be cost, especially the cost of tuition. But the problem isn’t just that college is expensive. It is also that going to college is complicated. It takes cultural and social, not just economic, capital. It means navigating advanced courses, standardized tests, forms. It means figuring out implicit rules—rules that can change.

Eliminating tuition would probably do very little to untangle the sailor’s knot of inequalities that make it hard for most Americans to go to college. It would not address the cultural and social barriers imposed by unequal K–12 schooling, which puts a select few students on the college pathway at the expense of millions of others. Neither would it address the changing social milieu of higher education, in which the majority are now non-traditional students. (“Non-traditional” students are classified in different ways depending on who is doing the defining, but the best way to understand the category is in contrast to our assumptions of a traditional college student—young, unfettered, and continuing to college straight from high school.) How and why they go to college can depend as much on things like whether a college is within driving distance or provides one-on-one admissions counseling as it does on the price.

Given all of these factors, free college would likely benefit only an outlying group of students who are currently shut out of higher education because of cost—students with the ability and/or some cultural capital but without wealth. In other words, any conversation about college is a pretty elite one even if the word “free” is right there in the descriptor.

The discussion about free college, outside of the Democratic primary race, has also largely been limited to community colleges, with some exceptions by state. Because I am primarily interested in education as an affirmative justice mechanism, I would like all minority-serving and historically black colleges (HBCUs)—almost all of which qualify as four-year degree institutions—to be included. HBCUs disproportionately serve students facing the intersecting effects of wealth inequality, systematic K–12 disparities, and discrimination. For those reasons, any effort to use higher education as a vehicle for greater equality must include support for HBCUs, allowing them to offer accessible degrees with less (or no) debt.

The Obama administration’s free community college plan, expanded in July to include grants that would reduce tuition at HBCUs, is a step in the right direction. Yet this is only the beginning of an educational justice agenda. An educational justice policy must include institutions of higher education but cannot only include institutions of higher education. Educational justice says that schools can and do reproduce inequalities as much as they ameliorate them. Educational justice says one hundred new Universities of Phoenix is not the same as access to high-quality instruction for the maximum number of willing students. And educational justice says that jobs programs that hire for ability over “fit” must be linked to millions of new credentials, no matter what form they take or how much they cost to obtain. Without that, some free college plans could reinforce prestige divisions between different types of schools, leaving the most vulnerable students no better off in the economy than they were before.

Free college plans are also limited by the reality that not everyone wants to go to college. Some people want to work and do not want to go to college forever and ever—for good reason. While the “opportunity costs” of spending four to six years earning a degree instead of working used to be balanced out by the promise of a “good job” after college, that rationale no longer holds, especially for poor students. Free-ninety-nine will not change that.

I am clear about all of that . . . and yet I don’t care. I do not care if free college won’t solve inequality. As an isolated policy, I know that it won’t. I don’t care that it will likely only benefit the high achievers among the statistically unprivileged—those with above-average test scores, know-how, or financial means compared to their cohort. Despite these problems, today’s debate about free college tuition does something extremely valuable. It reintroduces the concept of public good to higher education discourse—a concept that fifty years of individuation, efficiency fetishes, and a rightward drift in politics have nearly pummeled out of higher education altogether. We no longer have a way to talk about public education as a collective good because even we defenders have adopted the language of competition. President Obama justified his free community college plan on the grounds that “Every American . . . should be able to earn the skills and education necessary to compete and win in the twenty-first century economy.” Meanwhile, for-profit boosters claim that their institutions allow “greater access” to college for the public. But access to what kind of education? Those of us who believe in viable, affordable higher ed need a different kind of language. You cannot organize for what you cannot name.

Already, the debate about if college should be free has forced us all to consider what higher education is for. We’re dusting off old words like class and race and labor. We are even casting about for new words like “precariat” and “generation debt.” The Debt Collective is a prime example of this. The group of hundreds of students and graduates of (mostly) for-profit colleges are doing the hard work of forming a class-based identity around debt as opposed to work or income. The broader cultural conversation about student debt, to which free college plans are a response, sets the stage for that kind of work. The good of those conversations outweighs for me the limited democratization potential of free college.

Tressie McMillan Cottom is an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University and a contributing editor at Dissent . Her book Lower Ed: How For-Profit Colleges Deepen Inequality is forthcoming from the New Press.

This article is part of Dissent’s special issue of “Arguments on the Left.” Click to read contending arguments from Matt Bruenig and Mike Konczal .

Photo of middle school students working on computers

.css-13ygqr6:hover{background-color:#d1ecfa;}.css-13ygqr6:visited{color:#979797;}.css-13ygqr6.node--video:before{content:'';display:inline-block;height:20px;width:20px;margin:0 4px 0 0;background:url(data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg%20width%3D%2242px%22%20height%3D%2242px%22%20viewBox%3D%220%200%2042%2042%22%20alt%3D%22Video%20icon%22%20data-testid%3D%22play-circle%22%20version%3D%221.1%22%20xmlns%3D%22http%3A%2F%2Fwww.w3.org%2F2000%2Fsvg%22%3E%3Ctitle%3EVideo%3C%2Ftitle%3E%3Cdefs%3E%3C%2Fdefs%3E%3Cg%20id%3D%22play-circle%22%20fill%3D%22%23000000%22%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M21%2C0%20C9.38%2C0%200%2C9.38%200%2C21%20C0%2C32.62%209.38%2C42%2021%2C42%20C32.62%2C42%2042%2C32.62%2042%2C21%20C42%2C9.38%2032.62%2C0%2021%2C0%20L21%2C0%20Z%20M21%2C36.7733333%20C12.32%2C36.7733333%205.22666667%2C29.7266667%205.22666667%2C21%20C5.22666667%2C12.2733333%2012.32%2C5.22666667%2021%2C5.22666667%20C29.68%2C5.22666667%2036.7733333%2C12.32%2036.7733333%2C21%20C36.7733333%2C29.68%2029.68%2C36.7733333%2021%2C36.7733333%20L21%2C36.7733333%20Z%22%20id%3D%22circle%22%3E%3C%2Fpath%3E%3Cpath%20d%3D%22M29.54%2C19.88%20L17.7333333%2C12.9733333%20C16.8466667%2C12.46%2015.7733333%2C13.1133333%2015.7733333%2C14.0933333%20L15.7733333%2C27.9066667%20C15.7733333%2C28.9333333%2016.8933333%2C29.54%2017.7333333%2C29.0266667%20L29.5866667%2C22.12%20C30.4266667%2C21.6066667%2030.4266667%2C20.3933333%2029.54%2C19.88%20L29.54%2C19.88%20Z%22%20id%3D%22triangle%22%3E%3C%2Fpath%3E%3C%2Fg%3E%3C%2Fsvg%3E) no-repeat left bottom/18px 18px;} Teaching Students How to Research

Your content has been saved!

An illustrated question mark for a post asking about what classroom management strategy works consistently.

Question: What Classroom Management Strategy Works Consistently for You?

Illustration of a teenager walking among different paths

To Motivate Teens, Ask Them “Who’s Your Future Self?”

3 Tips for Better Peer Feedback in Elementary Classrooms

Illustration of people standing on a stack of books and looking at light bulbs through binoculars

Using Micro-Inquiry Tasks to Spark Curiosity

Photo of elementary school teacher working with students

How Text Reconstruction Supports Multilingual Learners

This is a custom piece of graphic art representing our Share What Works toolkit. It reads "Share What Works" in orange, and features a butterfly.

Build a “Share What Works” Experience in Your School Community!

How to Plan Effective Professional Development for Instructional Coaches

Student in wheelchair working at his desk in class, representing the idea of disability inclusion in school

A Framework for Disability Inclusion at School

Illustration of a boat full of people parting a large wave

How the Drive to Be Socially Connected Can Lead to School Improvement

illustration of teacher guiding students through a river of classroom technology, representing topics students should understand

5 Essential Tech Talks to Have With Students

Small Steps to Simplify Lessons Can Have a Big Impact in the Classroom

Illustration of hand checking off digital list

Understanding How AI Works Makes It More Effective in Lesson Planning

A question mark illustration for the post asking about a classroom hack.

Question: What’s a Classroom Hack Every Teacher Should Know?

Photo of high school students in classroom

Building a Classroom Community That Lasts

Culturally Responsive and Community-Focused PBL

How School Leaders Can Make Time for Teachers to Have Meaningful PBL Collaboration

Photo of middle school teacher speaking with students

5 Tips for Helping Students Adjust to PBL

Illustration of three students collaborating on a hand-drawn poster of a fern's lifecycle.

8 Ways to Amp Up Science Assessments

A Meaningful App-Building Project

Introducing Metacognition in Preschool

Two young students happily interact in a classroom

6 Essential Student Mindsets to Work On This Year

How to Set Up Your Classroom to Support Students’ Executive Function Skills

Young teacher on green background holding coffee and bag of decorations for the classroom reads studies on her phone

10 Studies Every Teacher Should Know About

Photo of elementary students working as a group

9 Minutes That Can Make a Big Difference

8 Closure Activities to Wrap Up a Lesson

8 Closing Activities to Wrap Up a Lesson

Illustration of brain jumping over hurdles

Using Learning Progressions to Build Student Confidence

Illustration of hands showing different gestures

28 Ways to Quickly Check for Understanding

Elementary student writing while teacher assists other students

Planning Writing Lessons for the Early Elementary Grades

Illustration of hand and pencil and keyboard

Using Formative Assessment to Measure Student Progress

Share full article

Supported by

Student Opinion

Is Online Learning Effective?

A new report found that the heavy dependence on technology during the pandemic caused “staggering” education inequality. What was your experience?

A young man in a gray hooded shirt watches a computer screen on a desk.

By Natalie Proulx

During the coronavirus pandemic, many schools moved classes online. Was your school one of them? If so, what was it like to attend school online? Did you enjoy it? Did it work for you?

In “ Dependence on Tech Caused ‘Staggering’ Education Inequality, U.N. Agency Says ,” Natasha Singer writes:

In early 2020, as the coronavirus spread, schools around the world abruptly halted in-person education. To many governments and parents, moving classes online seemed the obvious stopgap solution. In the United States, school districts scrambled to secure digital devices for students. Almost overnight, videoconferencing software like Zoom became the main platform teachers used to deliver real-time instruction to students at home. Now a report from UNESCO , the United Nations’ educational and cultural organization, says that overreliance on remote learning technology during the pandemic led to “staggering” education inequality around the world. It was, according to a 655-page report that UNESCO released on Wednesday, a worldwide “ed-tech tragedy.” The report, from UNESCO’s Future of Education division, is likely to add fuel to the debate over how governments and local school districts handled pandemic restrictions, and whether it would have been better for some countries to reopen schools for in-person instruction sooner. The UNESCO researchers argued in the report that “unprecedented” dependence on technology — intended to ensure that children could continue their schooling — worsened disparities and learning loss for hundreds of millions of students around the world, including in Kenya, Brazil, Britain and the United States. The promotion of remote online learning as the primary solution for pandemic schooling also hindered public discussion of more equitable, lower-tech alternatives, such as regularly providing schoolwork packets for every student, delivering school lessons by radio or television — and reopening schools sooner for in-person classes, the researchers said. “Available evidence strongly indicates that the bright spots of the ed-tech experiences during the pandemic, while important and deserving of attention, were vastly eclipsed by failure,” the UNESCO report said. The UNESCO researchers recommended that education officials prioritize in-person instruction with teachers, not online platforms, as the primary driver of student learning. And they encouraged schools to ensure that emerging technologies like A.I. chatbots concretely benefited students before introducing them for educational use. Education and industry experts welcomed the report, saying more research on the effects of pandemic learning was needed. “The report’s conclusion — that societies must be vigilant about the ways digital tools are reshaping education — is incredibly important,” said Paul Lekas, the head of global public policy for the Software & Information Industry Association, a group whose members include Amazon, Apple and Google. “There are lots of lessons that can be learned from how digital education occurred during the pandemic and ways in which to lessen the digital divide. ” Jean-Claude Brizard, the chief executive of Digital Promise, a nonprofit education group that has received funding from Google, HP and Verizon, acknowledged that “technology is not a cure-all.” But he also said that while school systems were largely unprepared for the pandemic, online education tools helped foster “more individualized, enhanced learning experiences as schools shifted to virtual classrooms.” Education International, an umbrella organization for about 380 teachers’ unions and 32 million teachers worldwide, said the UNESCO report underlined the importance of in-person, face-to-face teaching. “The report tells us definitively what we already know to be true, a place called school matters,” said Haldis Holst, the group’s deputy general secretary. “Education is not transactional nor is it simply content delivery. It is relational. It is social. It is human at its core.”

Students, read the entire article and then tell us:

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in .

Want all of The Times? Subscribe .

People come together together from both sides of the chasm between a split public school

Explore Our Exclusive Report

SoT Visual Stamp With Education Week transparent

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Sign Up & Sign In

EdWeek Market Brief

A collage of faceless educators with books, chalkboard with equations, an open laptop, math symbols and computer icons all around them.

Skip to main content
Keyboard shortcuts for audio player
Subscribe to NPR Ed Newsletter

Code Switch

Fighting back on book bans.

September 18, 2024 • B.A. Parker brings us around the country to see what access to books is looking like for students in Texas, librarians in Idaho and her own high school English teacher in Pennsylvania.

Navient, one of the country’s largest student loan servicers, has reached a $120 million settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — resulting in the company being permanently banned from servicing federal student loans. Getty Images hide caption

Navient reaches $120 million settlement for misleading student loan borrowers

September 12, 2024 • According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, $100 million will be used to make payments to impacted borrowers in a settlement with the former servicer of student loans.

A young woman vapes an electronic cigarette. Some districts are installing high-tech vape detectors to alert school officials if students are using e-cigarettes. whitebalance.oatt/Getty Images hide caption

Schools are putting vape detectors in bathrooms -- paid for by Juul

September 12, 2024 • Some districts are using money from a $1.7 billion legal settlement against e-cigarette manufacturer Juul Labs to pay for the high-tech devices. But there are critics and also privacy concerns.

Schools are putting vape detectors in bathrooms — paid for by Juul

Starting Your Podcast: A Guide For Students

New to podcasting? Don't panic.

This illustration shows three students at their desks talking, with comment bubbles coming out of their mouths. A teacher stands on the left side of the illustration, holding a padlocked box that contains students' cellphones inside it.

Indiana's cellphone ban means less school drama. But students miss their headphones

September 10, 2024 • Weeks into a new school year, students miss being able to listen to music, but teachers say the cellphone ban is making their jobs easier.

How Indiana's school cell phone ban is playing out

Presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off in a debate on Tuesday. LA Johnson/NPR hide caption

Here’s where Trump and Harris stand on 6 education issues

September 8, 2024 • From school choice to college affordability, Trump and Harris don't have a lot in common. Ahead of the candidates’ only scheduled debate, we’ve put together a handy primer of their education views.

How the candidates differ on their views and policies on education

Jennifer Carter, a teacher at Apalachee High School, said she "felt helpless" when she tried to protect her students during a shooting at the school this week. Barrow County School System hide caption

'I lied.' A teacher describes protecting her students during Apalachee HS shooting

September 7, 2024 • In a post shared widely on social media, Jennifer Carter gave her account about what it took to keep her students safe at the Georgia school where four people died this week.

Lilla Lanivich, 14, and her service dog, Lopez, outside their family’s home in Rochester Hills, Mich. This year’s middle school winner of the NPR Student Podcast Challenge tells how her golden retriever, Lopez, helped restore her independence. Emily Elconin for NPR hide caption

Student Podcast Challenge

Chronic illness shattered this teen's life. her service dog helped get it back.

September 6, 2024 • The middle school winner of NPR's Student Podcast Challenge tells how her golden retriever, Lopez, changed her life.

Carrillo/SPC MS Winner

Gen Z asks: what is school for? Plus, rebranding gentrification

A student waits to walk across the stage to receive her diploma during a graduation ceremony at Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in Bradley, Illinois. Scott Olson/Getty Images hide caption

It's Been a Minute

Gen z asks: what is school for plus, rebranding gentrification.

September 6, 2024 • It's September, which means millions of young learners across the country are dusting off their backpacks and heading back to school. But a new study from Gallup and The Walton Family Foundation has shown that students are less engaged, and feel less challenged than last year, and about half of them have no plans to get a Bachelor's degree right after high school. Host Brittany Luse is joined by Karin Klein, education reporter and author of Rethinking College: A Guide to Thriving Without a Degree , and NPR Education Desk correspondent and Senior Editor Cory Turner to parse through what has next generation feeling despondent and if we need to rethink the purpose of high school.

Students and residents mourn those who lost their lives near the scene of the mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. Peter Zay/Anadolu via Getty Images hide caption

What research says about preventing school shootings

September 5, 2024 • Experts on school violence say a key to preventing such tragedies is identifying and supporting students in crisis before they hurt others.

Students kneel in front of a makeshift memorial in front of Apalachee High School on in Winder, Ga., on Thursday, one day after two students and two teachers were shot and killed at the school. Jessica McGowan/Getty Images hide caption

These are the 2 students and 2 teachers killed at Apalachee High School in Georgia

September 5, 2024 • Just one month into the school year, four people were ripped away from their loved ones, their lives ended by a mass shooting at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga.

A hand sprinkles a powder into a cocktail glass on a bar next to several other drinks.

A representative for RAINN, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, an anti-sexual assault organization, recommends guarding your food and drink at a party and realizing how fast they can be tampered with. Peter Cade/Getty Images hide caption

Worried about your drink getting spiked? Here are some safety tips

September 5, 2024 • It's September, and many college students are arriving on campus for the first time. This exciting new chapter can have a darker side: College students are considered a high-risk group for drugging.

Tsung-Dao Lee and Chen Ning Yang, winners of the Nobel Prize in physics in 1957. Both were affiliated with the Institute for Advanced Study at the time of the award. Alan Richards/Institute for Advanced Study hide caption

Perspective

T.d. lee changed science in china and my life. this is what i owe to him.

September 5, 2024 • Chinese particle physicist Yangyang Cheng reflects on the legacy of the late Nobel laureate T.D. Lee — how his ideas changed her life, and the limit to his engagement with Beijing.

The cover of the Yup'ik alphabet coloring book. Courtesy of Nikki Corbett hide caption

These Alaska moms couldn’t find a Yup’ik children’s book. So they made one themselves

September 4, 2024 • Yup’ik is the most spoken Native language in Alaska, but finding Yup’ik books for young children can be almost impossible. These moms created their own – and now they’re fielding nearly 1,000 orders.

Yup'ik mom in Alaska creates her own books to teach her kids the Yup'ik language

Hear what the nation's top student podcasters have to say

September 2, 2024 • In its sixth year, our contest handed over the mic to fourth graders for the very first time. We received nearly 2,000 entries from all around the country — and we've narrowed it down to 10 middle school and 10 high school finalists.

Electrical circuit can be created with lemons to power a small light source. A chemical reaction between the copper and zinc plates and the citric acid produces a small current, thus powering a light bulb. Andriy Onufriyenko/Getty Images hide caption

Want to see a cool trick? Make a tiny battery with these 3 household items

September 2, 2024 • Just in time for the return of the school year, we're going "Back To School" by revisiting a classic at-home experiment that turns lemons into batteries — powerful enough to turn on a clock or a small lightbulb. But how does the science driving that process show up in household batteries we use daily? Host Emily Kwong and former host Maddie Sofia talk battery 101 with environmental engineer Jenelle Fortunato.

Hear here! Our list of the best podcasts by fourth graders

August 30, 2024 • For the first time ever, NPR presents the fourth grade winners of the Student Podcast Challenge.

Male teenage student with hand on chin sitting at desk in high school classroom

A new survey finds middle- and high-schoolers feel much less engaged in school than they did just last year. Klaus Vedfelt/Getty Images hide caption

Teens are losing interest in school, and say they hear about college 'a lot'

August 29, 2024 • A new poll finds Gen Z teens are optimistic about the future but feeling less engaged at school.

Survey results: Teens don't feel challenged in school and feel unprepared for future

The Supreme Court is seen at sundown in Washington, Nov. 6, 2020. J. Scott Applewhite/AP hide caption

Supreme Court rebuffs Biden administration plea to restore SAVE student debt plan

August 28, 2024 • The justices rejected an administration request to put most of the latest multibillion-dollar plan back into effect while lawsuits make their way through lower courts.

A child receives care against head lice. LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ/BELGA MAG/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

Were you sent home from school for head lice? Here’s why that’s no longer recommended

August 28, 2024 • Guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now says kids can stay in school. A pediatrician explains why that makes sense.

Heads Up: The CDC has changed its guidance on school kids and head lice

This photo shows a crowd of students taking part in pro-Palestinian protests in November. Some are wearing keffiyehs. Some are holding signs. The student in the middle is holding a fist in the air.

Students take part in pro-Palestinian protests in November. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

Campus protests over the Gaza war

'institutional neutrality': how one university walks a fine line on gaza protests.

August 28, 2024 • School is back in session, and the line between providing campus security and allowing for free speech is still extremely thin.

The head of Vanderbilt on the upcoming school year

Planet Money Summer School

Quiz: do you know your economic history.

August 27, 2024 • Time to show your economic history skills based on what we’ve covered in Planet Money Summer School 2024: An Incomplete Economic History of the World. Make it through the quiz, and receive a — and we cannot stress this enough — totally fake (yet well-earned) diploma.

A young student struggles to carry a large heavy backpack, symbolizing the worries that can accompany the transition back-to-school.

Today’s teens struggle with big feelings — and their parents struggle to have hard conversations with them, according to a recent Gallup poll. Teen psychologist Lisa Damour explains how parents can better support their kids as a new school year begins. Annika McFarlane/Getty Images hide caption

Want to help support your Gen Z kids? Talking really helps

August 27, 2024 • A recent Gallup poll offers parents fresh insights into the emotional landscape of Gen Z youth, just in time for the new school year and all the changes it may bring.

How to help your Gen Z kid cope with their back-to-school emotions

The fine line between providing campus security and allowing for free speech

Pro-Palestinian supporters on the campus of Columbia University on April 30, 2024 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

Consider This from NPR

The fine line between providing campus security and allowing for free speech.

August 23, 2024 • College students are trickling back onto campuses for the fall semester, just months after protests exploded across the U.S. over Israel's war in Gaza.

Community college students face hurdles to earning a four-year degree.

Most community college students plan to get 4-year degrees. Few actually do

August 22, 2024 • Community college is often touted as an affordable start for students who want to earn bachelor’s degrees. But according to federal data, only 13% of students actually reach that goal.

[WFYI] Community college transfer numbers

Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Our Best Education Articles of 2022

Our most popular education articles of 2022 explore how to help students feel connected to each other and cultivate character strengths like curiosity and humility, amid the many stressors and pressures that young people are facing today. They also offer support for educators’ and school leaders’ well-being, and reflect on hopes for transformative change in education.

If you are looking for specific activities to support your students’ and colleagues’ social and emotional well-being in 2023, visit our Greater Good in Education website, featuring free research-based practices, lessons, and strategies for cultivating kinder, happier, and more equitable classrooms and schools. For a deeper dive into the science behind social-emotional learning, mindfulness, and ethical development, consider our suite of self-paced online courses for educational professionals, including our capstone course, Teaching and Learning for the Greater Good . Or join one of our new communities of practice that focus on educator well-being, offering space for rest, reflection, togetherness, and hope—and some science, too!

Here are the 12 best education articles of 2022, based on a composite ranking of pageviews and editors’ picks. 

Six Ways to Find Your Courage During Challenging Times , by Amy L. Eva: Courage doesn’t have to look dramatic or fearless. Sometimes it looks more like quiet perseverance.

Calm, Clear, and Kind: What Students Want From Their Teachers , by Jenna Whitehead: Researchers asked students what makes a caring teacher—and these same qualities may help support your well-being as an educator.

How to Help Teens Put Less Pressure on Themselves , by Karen Bluth: Self-compassion can help teens who are struggling with toxic perfectionism. Five Ways to Support the Well-Being of School Leaders , by Julia Mahfouz, Kathleen King, and Danny Yahya: Burnout rates are high among principals. How can we fight burnout and promote self-care?

How to Help Your Students Develop Positive Habits , by Arthur Schwartz: Small habits repeated regularly can help students cultivate character strengths like patience, gratitude, and kindness.

Can We Make Real, Transformative Change in Education? , by Renee Owen: A new program is preparing leaders to facilitate systemic change in education in order to better serve all students.

Five Ways to Help Students Feel Connected at School Again , by Jennifer de Forest and Karen VanAusdal: According to students themselves, they are yearning for opportunities to connect with friends and peers as they head back to school.

How to Prepare for the Stresses of College , by Erin T. Barker and Andrea L. Howard: Researchers explain the most common causes of stress and distress at college, and what students can do to thrive during a big life transition.

How Humility Can Make Your Students the Best People Ever , by Vicki Zakrzewski: Simple ways for educators to help students move from “me” to “we.”

Four Ways to Inspire Humble Curiosity in Your Students , by Amy L. Eva: Humility and curiosity can encourage students to be passionate about learning and open to others’ perspectives.

What Middle Schoolers Can Teach Us About Respect , by Sara E. Rimm-Kaufman and Lia E. Sandilos: Teens are developing a nuanced understanding of what respect means. Here are some ideas for cultivating more of it in the classroom.

Why Teachers Need Each Other Right Now , by Amy L. Eva: Here are four simple ways to find social support as an educational professional.

About the Author

Greater good editors, you may also enjoy.

Six Ways to Find Your Courage During Challenging Times

How to Help Teens Put Less Pressure on Themselves

Thought-Provoking Books for Educators in 2022

Two teachers walking together in a school hallway, both smiling and wearing lanyards with ID badges

Why Teachers Need Each Other Right Now

Calm, Clear, and Kind: What Students Want From Their Teachers

Our Best Education Articles of 2021

IMAGES

A Brief History of Free Education
Why You Should Support Free Education for All
FREE EDUCATION FOR EVERYONE
Free Education if Your Parent is a Postgraduate Student
Education Should Be Free [1 min read]
7 Reasons Why Education Should Be Free

VIDEO

🎾 Free Education and Try Strategy , With : BESTIND
Debate: Free education opens opportunities or limits opportunities. (Group-1)
Education Free From Harm
TOP 200 VVI Question ll Articles ll Use of a, an & the ll English Grammar ll By
Articles
Articles

COMMENTS

Should College Be Free?
The push for tuition-free higher education comes amid a broader enrollment crisis in the United States. Total undergraduate enrollment fell by 6.6 percent from 2019 to 2021, according to the ...
Is free college a good idea? Increasingly, evidence says yes
Education The promise of free college (and its potential pitfalls) Douglas N. Harris, Raquel Farmer-Hinton, Debbie Kim, John B. Diamond, Tangela Blakely Reavis, Kelly Krupa Rifelj, Hilary Lustick ...
Free college is now a reality in nearly 30 states
Maine's Gov. Janet Mills, also a Democrat, has proposed a plan to make two years of community college free for recent high school graduates. If passed, that would bring the total number of ...
Free Education: Origins, Achievements, and Current Situation
The idea of Free Education mainly concentrates on primary education. Already in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966, in article 13, 2(a) it states: "Primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all" (United Nations General Assembly 1966).Other legal documents such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child from 1989 highlight under ...
Free Education
UN_523257_Classrom_Timor.jpg. According to international human rights law, primary education shall be compulsory and free of charge. Secondary and higher education shall be made progressively free of charge. Free primary education is fundamental in guaranteeing everyone has access to education. However, in many developing countries, families ...
The Life-Changing Effects of Free College
The HAIL Scholarship is a new program, but even without it the students would likely have been able to attend the University of Michigan free of charge—90 percent of similarly situated high ...
What you need to know about the right to education
155 countries legally guarantee 9 years or more of compulsory education. Only 99 countries legally guarantee at least 12 years of free education. Eliminating inequalities and disparities in education. While only 4% of the poorest youth complete upper secondary school in low-income countries, 36% of the richest do.
Tuition-free college is critical to our economy
It envisions a program as universal and free as K-12 education is today, with all the sustainable benefits such programs (including Social Security and Medicare) enjoy. It also calls for making four years of public college tuition free, again in partnership with states, for students from families making less than $125,000 per year.
The pros and cons of 'free college' and 'college promise' programs
Just over half of the college promise programs are state-sponsored. More than three-quarters of state-sponsored programs require award recipients to live in the state for a year. Most — 80% — allow students to attend a two-year or four-year school. Of those not sponsored by a state, 23% target students in a specific county, 24% target a ...
Should Higher Education Be Free?
Should Higher Education Be Free? by. Vijay Govindarajan. and. Jatin Desai. September 05, 2013. In the United States, our higher education system is broken. Since 1980, we've seen a 400% increase ...
'Free-college' and 'tuition-free' programs: What the research says
Research shows the results of so-called "free college" programs differ according to their structure and scope. Higher education can be expensive, and tuition is one part of the overall cost. Meanwhile, most free-college and free-tuition programs take a "last dollar" approach, meaning they cover only the amount of tuition left over after ...
Why Free College Is Necessary
Why Free College Is Necessary. Higher education can't solve inequality, but the debate about free college tuition does something extremely valuable. It reintroduces the concept of public good to education discourse. Student debt activists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, March 2014 (Light Brigading / Flickr)
Edutopia
Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. Explore topics such as mastery-based learning, classroom culture, ELLs, and web-based resources.
American Journal of Education
Ranked #563 out of 1,543 "Education" journals. The American Journal of Education seeks to bridge and integrate the intellectual, methodological, and substantive diversity of educational scholarship and to encourage a vigorous dialogue between educational scholars and policy makers. It publishes empirical research, from a wide range of ...
Is Online Learning Effective?
219. A UNESCO report says schools' heavy focus on remote online learning during the pandemic worsened educational disparities among students worldwide. Amira Karaoud/Reuters. By Natalie Proulx ...
How technology is reinventing K-12 education
In 2023 K-12 schools experienced a rise in cyberattacks, underscoring the need to implement strong systems to safeguard student data. Technology is "requiring people to check their assumptions ...
Education Week
Education Week's ambitious project seeks to portray the reality of teaching and to guide smarter policies and practices for the workforce of more than 3 million educators: The State of Teaching ...
Education
Transforming braille education could help millions of visually impaired Americans. August 19, 2024 • For blind and low vision adults, the ability to read braille can be life-changing. Braille ...
Our Best Education Articles of 2022
Here are the 12 best education articles of 2022, based on a composite ranking of pageviews and editors' picks. Six Ways to Find Your Courage During Challenging Times, by Amy L. Eva: Courage doesn't have to look dramatic or fearless. Sometimes it looks more like quiet perseverance. Calm, Clear, and Kind: What Students Want From Their ...
Biden-Harris Administration Awards Grants to Historically Black
The U.S. Department of Education announced today that it is awarding grants to eight Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) under the Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence Program (Hawkins) and the Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program (MSEIP).The Department is also making an additional award to establish a National Technical Assistance Center to Diversify the ...
Nebraska sees more deaths, serious injuries of state-involved children
Inspector General Jennifer Carter said 21 child deaths and 27 serious injuries were reported to her office during the year. That's up from 11 deaths and 15 serious injuries during the previous year.

Is free college a good idea? Increasingly, evidence says yes

What Did We Learn in Milwaukee?

What about the evidence beyond Milwaukee?

Back to the Free College Proposals

Caveats and Concluding Thoughts

Free Education: Origins, Achievements, and Current Situation

Access this chapter

Author information

Corresponding author

Editor information

Section Editor information

Copyright information

About this entry

Download citation

Share this entry

RSS feed Facebook Twitter Donate Share -->

Free Education

You are here

Claim of unconstitutionality against article 183 of the General Education Law (Colombia Constitutional Court; 2010)

A Guarantee of Tuition-Free College Can Have Life-Changing Effects

About the Author

What you need to know about the right to education

Related items

More on this subject

Other recent news

Tuition-free college is critical to our economy

Morley Winograd and Max Lubin

Comments (13)

Comments Policy

Genia Curtsinger 2 years ago 2 years ago

nothing 3 years ago 3 years ago

Jaden Wendover 3 years ago 3 years ago

Samantha Cole 3 years ago 3 years ago

Nick Gurrs 3 years ago 3 years ago

NO 3 years ago 3 years ago

Not saying my name 3 years ago 3 years ago

Brisa 3 years ago 3 years ago

m 3 years ago 3 years ago

Trevor Everhart 3 years ago 3 years ago

Olga Snichernacs 4 years ago 4 years ago

Anonymous Cat 4 years ago 4 years ago

Mister B 4 years ago 4 years ago

EdSource Special Reports

California School Dashboard lacks pandemic focus, earns a D grade in report

Communication with parents is key to addressing chronic absenteeism, panel says

Helping students with mental health struggles may help them return to school

Millions of kids are still skipping school. Could the answer be recess — and a little cash?

EdSource in your inbox!

Stay informed with our daily newsletter

Should Higher Education Be Free?

Partner Center

‘Free-college’ and ‘tuition-free’ programs: What the research says

Republish this article

Candidates in favor of free community college

Candidates in favor of free public colleges and universities

What the research says

Key context

Formative findings

Recent research

Further reading

Subject experts

About The Author

Denise-Marie Ordway

Spring 2024

Why Free College Is Necessary

Question: What Classroom Management Strategy Works Consistently for You?

To Motivate Teens, Ask Them “Who’s Your Future Self?”

3 Tips for Better Peer Feedback in Elementary Classrooms

Using Micro-Inquiry Tasks to Spark Curiosity

How Text Reconstruction Supports Multilingual Learners

Build a “Share What Works” Experience in Your School Community!

How to Plan Effective Professional Development for Instructional Coaches

A Framework for Disability Inclusion at School

How the Drive to Be Socially Connected Can Lead to School Improvement

5 Essential Tech Talks to Have With Students

Small Steps to Simplify Lessons Can Have a Big Impact in the Classroom

Understanding How AI Works Makes It More Effective in Lesson Planning

Question: What’s a Classroom Hack Every Teacher Should Know?

Building a Classroom Community That Lasts

Culturally Responsive and Community-Focused PBL