Introduction

Ideas, proposals, and policies debating how public higher education should be funded is not a new topic of study in public policy. There have been many state and federal programs over the last several decades that sought to increase access to higher education for low-income students and minorities, and recent concerns about the rising cost of higher education and the growing student debt burden has a become a hot-button issue for policymakers across the county. The link between education attainment and economic outcomes has been the impetus behind many of these policies, and the need for college graduates in the workforce has led many states to adopt specific goals to increase postsecondary completion and attainment rates. State-wide tuition-free community college programs are a relatively new solution to these issues that has gained momentum since former President Obama’s “America’s College Promise” plan was proposed in 2015. Since most of these statewide programs have been adopted so recently, early forecasts and projections of enrollment numbers and funding levels are available, but reliable outcomes and numbers for most of the policies have not yet been determined. While the idea of free community college has become increasingly attractive to states, how to best implement these policies has not yet reached a consensus. Since the recently-elected governor of New Jersey Phil Murphy has made free community college a major part of his agenda, further research into these programs’ frameworks and rationale is needed to help guide New Jersey’s policymakers as they begin to craft their own state-wide program.

Though state funded higher education expenditures have remained historically low in the decade since the Great Recession (Mitchell et al, 2017), location-based promise programs have emerged in recent years as a a popular way for states to invest desperately needed funds into their higher education systems.   Since 2014, sixteen states have adopted some form of statewide promise programs (Campaign for Free College Tuition, n.d.).  Specific policy decisions concerning design and funding made by these states will ultimately play a major role in who benefits from these policies and how successful they are at achieving their stated goals. In order to understand the reasonings and rationale behind the adoption of these broad, ambitious policies, this paper will address the following questions:

• What are the fundamental components and goals of the state-wide “tuition-free” community college policies of Tennessee, Oregon, and New York?
•  What challenges can they illustrate to New Jersey’s own developing policy?

Methodology

Tennessee, Oregon, and New York, while not representative of all states with statewide tuition free community college policies, do offer some valuable insights into the development and designs of such initiatives.  All three are early adopters of location-based Promise programs and feature a variety of design choices and concepts to implement their policies.  Due to the newness of these programs, the limited amount of data available on their outcomes and results prevents a full policy evaluation from being undertaken.  However, choosing to analyze these policies in greater depth may allow a more thorough understanding of both the goals and solutions of each state to demonstrate where they align and differ and help illustrate the trends in higher education developing across the country.  Analyzing these policies will help to uncover the common themes associated with these types of programs, what policymakers are attempting to accomplish by creating them, and reveal what these states prioritize when it comes to higher education.  How these programs are created, whether shaped in state legislatures or attached to budget and funding bills, will also help shed light on the priorities of state-funded higher education.  While program components and outcomes may not be directly transferable or applicable to New Jersey’s policy because of differences in funding or demographic challenges, understanding the justification behind other states’ policies and their goals will be a useful tool for New Jersey as it determines the future of public higher education in the state.

Literature Review

Location-based Promise Programs

Carruthers and Fox (2016) analyze the outcomes of Tennessee’s Knox Achieves program, a predecessor to the state’s Tennessee Promise program, and evaluate the potential effect it had on college enrollment and college persistence. While this program was only available to Knox County residents and graduates, it, like Tennessee Promise, provided college coaching and last-dollar scholarships and aid to first-year community college students looking to make an immediate transition from high school to one of the state’s public two-year institutions. The authors used difference-in-differences analyses and propensity score matching estimators to mimic an experimental research design to determine whether the program’s goals were realized. Through their research, the authors found that Knox Achieves was strongly associated with an increased likelihood of graduating from high school and enrolling directly in college but cannot assert that aid was the only reason the program was successful. This is because enrollment numbers increased most for the program’s lowest income students who saw little to no aid from the program because their tuition and fees were covered by other grants and scholarships. With the programs basic structure expanding statewide with Tennessee Promise, evaluation of Knox Achieves provides valuable insight and background into Tennessee’s current higher education system and evolving student behavior patterns.

Muñoz et al (2016) produced a study that evaluates the Missouri A+ Schools Program, a merit scholarship program that provided scholarship support to eligible graduates from participating high schools to help them enroll in any in-state, public two-year college. The aim of the program was to increase enrollment for the state’s public two-year institutions and democratize higher education attainment throughout Missouri. The staggered adoption of the program allowed the authors to create a quasi-experimental research design by analyzing the school-level data collected by the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) from 1992 to 2010. The study found that the program increased two-year college-going rates by 5.3 percentage points and decreased four-year college-going rates by 3.8 percentage points in participating schools overall. This program resulted in increased enrollment for Missouri’s community colleges, while simultaneously funneling enrollment away from the state’s four-year colleges. Therefore, this study acknowledges the potential negative consequence associated with such community college-based programs, since diverting students from a four-year to a two-year institution creates the added complication for students who will eventually look to transfer to a four-year institution to attain a bachelor’s degree.

Increasing College Access

While there is substantial research on the effect of lowered tuition on college enrollment, Denning (2017) specifically examines the effects of a decrease in community college price on community college enrollment specifically.  Though most prior literature has examined the effect of additional grant aid in decreasing the net price of college, Denning chooses to focus on reduction in the “sticker price” of college overall, which reduces the cost of college for a broader group of students, notably those who do not receive any financial aid or do not fulfill the requirements for financial aid. Using data from the Texas Education Research Center, the Texas Education Agency, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, and the Texas Association of Community Colleges, the author tracked the variation in tuition prices at community colleges in Texas to show that enrollment in the first year after high school increased by 5.1 percentage points for each $1,000