California’s new ‘free college’ law for community colleges covers more than tuition
“…A student speaks in support of free tuition during an event at Los Angeles Trade-Tech College that included L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti, Asm. Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles), and the city’s community college leaders.
After California lawmakers passed a law in 2017 that some of its backers touted as making community college tuition-free, David Loverin heard from a lot of families eager to take advantage of it.
When legislators and the media began focusing on the law, “they started promoting it as free college,” said Loverin, director of financial aid at College of the Sequoias, a community college in Visalia, south of Fresno. “But when you went back to the actual bill, it wasn’t really written that way. So a lot of families are coming to us saying ‘free college, free college’ and we’re like, no, not really.”
That’s because the law, AB 19, known as the California College Promise program, allocated $46 million to the state’s 114 community colleges with the idea of helping students cover some of their costs, not necessarily tuition…”
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