Support for initiatives to make community college free has grown in recent years, but new analysis suggests that such reforms may fail to achieve their intended goals.
A new study from the Annenberg Institute at Brown University found that so-called “last-dollar tuition guarantee programs” for two-year community colleges do not meaningfully increase the number of enrolled students.
Study authors David B. Monaghan and Elizabeth A. Hawke investigated the impact of two Pennsylvania programs that fully cover the cost of community college, the Community College of Philadelphia’s 50th Anniversary Scholars program (CCPAS) and the Morgan Success Scholarship (MSS).
Monaghan and Hawke stated in the study’s abstract that they found little to no evidence that CCPAS “has any impact on college-going behavior.”
Conversely, they found that MSS increased community college enrollment, but much of this increase was because the program temporarily “diverts students away from four-year colleges.”