New York State's New "Excelsior Scholarship" Full Tuition If Family Makes < $125,000

Note:
This is for state community colleges and four-years, and is only to take effect after exhausting Pell Grant and the New York Tution Assistance Program.

The name stuck out to me, for some reason.

Reference:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2017/01/03/new-york-takes-a-stab-at-debt-free-college-covering-tuition-for-families-earning-less-than-125000/

http://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/03/nyregion/free-tuition-new-york-colleges-plan.html

New York Governor Proposes Free College For Lower-Income Students : The Two-Way : NPR

 

Happen to be visiting friends in Upstate NY now, all the rage on the local news. Good idea if they can fund it.

 

Currently, the graduation rate across all colleges is very low. Community college is a dismal 13% on average. My math says that if we really want the best ROI for our investment of "free" college putting educated members back into our community, we should be offering full tuition scholarships for graduate school. Part 2: this is a "last dollar award" which means the Pell Grant has to first be exhausted. Pell comes in at about $6000 right now, that already covers public community college and most of a state school. ... so clearly cost is NOT a barrier for this group to completion.

 

I don't agree with the bolded portion, but the second part of your post really sheds an interesting light on this whole situation. What is really the point of the scholarship if funds sufficient to fund most programs would have to be exhausted first? Does it simply serve as an incentive to get students to enroll in longer community college programs or for students who had previously failed a number of courses?

 

Because Trump won the election, it's a press play. AND fwiw, Pell Grants can't be used in Grad school - the very people that can do the most with their education. But by all means, let's pay for people to take their liberal arts 101's before dropping out and filling those important entry level jobs the PhDs don't want.
Seriously, funding 100/200 level college blows my mind. About Community Colleges

 

Good point. The political optics of it should have been my first thought on this one!