The drive for tuition-free public college experienced a rebirth Tuesday, rising from the ashes of the 2016 presidential election to re-emerge at the state level.

New York’s governor, Democrat Andrew Cuomo, delivered the latest version of the idea at LaGuardia Community College in Queens, flanked by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Cuomo, already rumored as a future presidential candidate, unwrapped a proposal that in many ways looks like the plan his party’s nominee, Hillary Clinton, brought to the 2016 election — with a few differences.

Cuomo’s plan, called the Excelsior Scholarship, would ensure free tuition at New York’s public two- and four-year institutions to students whose families make up to $125,000 per year. That’s the same income threshold Clinton used for her national plan after Sanders’s strong run for the Democratic nomination pushed her to adopt a tuition-free proposal. But Cuomo called for phasing in the program more quickly than Clinton — over three years ending in 2019, instead of over four years ending in 2021.

The proposal for New York drew both praise and opposition within the state. Students and public higher education leaders backed it as supporting affordability for low- and middle-income families. But legislative Republican leadership balked at handing the bill to taxpayers. Meanwhile, the state’s private colleges and universities sounded a cautious note while awaiting more details. Many private college leaders strongly opposed the idea when it was pushed by Clinton and Sanders.

Sanders signaled a belief that New York will be the first of many states to roll out free tuition proposals. However, several national analysts remained split over whether free tuition would encourage more students to enroll and finish their degrees or whether it will amount to a regressive handout to middle-class and wealthy families who do not need it.

Cuomo’s proposal, which will need to be approved by the state’s legislators, would cover students enrolled in two-year and four-year programs at institutions in the State University of New York and the City University of New York systems. In some ways, it’s a throwback for CUNY, which was long associated with tuition-free attendance until the 1970s.

Students will need to be enrolled full time to participate, a requirement the governor’s office said would encourage on-time graduation. The governor’s office also indicated that the initiative is structured as a “last-dollar” program, paying after students receive other state and federal grants.

The new program would be rolled out over three years, starting in the fall of 2017. That year, state residents making up to $100,000 would qualify. The cutoff would rise to $110,000 in 2018, followed by $125,000 in 2019.

Cuomo’s office estimated that 80 percent of New York’s households make $125,000 or less. About 940,000 of them have eligible college-age children.

The program would cost about $163 million annually once it is fully phased in, according to estimates from the governor’s office. For comparison, New York has an existing Tuition Assistance Program for students that provides about $1 billion in grants annually. The state spent about $10.7 billion on higher education in 2016, including capital projects and personal service, according to its budget results for all governmental funds.

New York counted 573,555 full-time-equivalent students in public higher education in its 2017 budget. The average annual tuition for a bachelor’s program at SUNY institutions is $6,470, according to the governor’s office. It is $6,330 at CUNY institutions. Associate degrees at the respective institutions average $4,350 and $4,800. Cuomo made no mention Tuesday of the program covering room and board, but those costs vary widely in New York State, where some public institutions serve commuter populations, others serve residential populations, and other institutions fall in between.

When introducing his proposal, Cuomo likened the push for free college tuition to the push generations ago to have the state pay for high school attendance.

“If you want to offer everybody a fair shot, then you have to get up-to-date, and you have to say what high school was 75 years ago, college is today,” Cuomo said. “College is a mandatory step if you really want to be a success. And the way this society said, ‘We’re going to pay for high school because you need high school,’ this society should say, ‘We’re going to pay for college because you need college to be successful.’”

Sanders argued economic changes have made postsecondary education necessary for success.

“The economy has changed,” he said. “Technology has changed. The global economy has changed. And if we are going to do justice to the working families of this country, to lower-income families, if we are going to have an economy that creates the kinds of jobs that we need for our people, we must have the best-educated workforce in the world.”

Many of New York’s higher education leaders offered… read full article