Republican opponents of Roy Cooper, a democrat, have been unenthusiastic about this plan. Pat McCrory, former North Carolina Governor, criticized Cooper’s plan during the governor race in the fall for being unreasonable. McCrory was able to lower tuition at three University of North Carolina systems to just $500 during his time as governor.
North Carolina’s Career and College Promise is a program that allows high school students enrolled in public schools may use in order to take free community college classes. Cooper’s plan is to expand this to recent graduates that have at least a GPA of 2.0 starting in the 2018-2019 school year.
“I would really appreciate having an opportunity to have a free education while attending college. As a future community college student, this would help me save a lot of money that can saved up for later uses in life,” said Ramesh Karki, senior.
In North Carolina, community college tuition is an estimated $1,216 per semester. Cooper does not plan on making the state pay completely for the tuition. He still wants students to get money from scholarships, pell grants and then the state will pay for whatever the student has left over to pay.
Athens has had a large portion of students that go to community college after high school to save money due to not being able to afford a university’s tuition. With this plan, many students are able to save the money up from tuition of community college and could attempt to transfer to a university later on.
For funding the program, Cooper wants to start off with spending $19 million to get a program, NC GROW, started up next year. Cooper bases his plan loosely off what Tennessee did to provide free tuition for their recent high school graduates. Also taken from Tennessee’s plan, Cooper proposes using lottery funds to help start up this program and provide for the free tuition.
In order for the plan to be implemented in North Carolina, it would have to pass through a republican-dominated legislature. The reasoning behind the republican opposition is that they believe the cost of community college is not what is holding the recent graduates back from enrolling. They also see a problem in how the money would be distributed after scholarships and grants have been accounted for. However, according to statistics in Tennessee, the program did encourage lower income students to enroll in community college.
“I do not think it would influence our graduation rate but I do believe this will impact the amount of students deciding to go to college after graduating. It will only change the people that were not planning to go to college. Those who were planning to graduate and go straight into the workforce without a degree,” said Christopher Remaley, math teacher and student council advisor.
