New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo recently proposed a plan that would make tuition for New York state public colleges free for students whose households earn under $125,000 annually.

The Excelsior Scholarship would be available for students attending State University of New York, City University of New York and community colleges. Nearly one million families in New York state would qualify for the scholarship, according to the state’s website.

The plan is still pending legislative approval and would cost $163 million in its first year. It is set to roll out in the fall of 2017.

Critics have rallied against the program, saying it will do little to help lower-income families. Others have said it is a solid first step toward making college enrollment the norm for low-income students.

Matthew Chingos, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute, said Cuomo’s plan “doesn’t have anything new for lower-income families and piles all the new money into middle and upper-middle income families.”

Chingos said the scholarship is less progressive than plans proposed by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders during the 2016 presidential campaign. Clinton’s and Sanders’ plans would have combined state and federal money to make tuition free, while letting students keep their existing aid.

The Excelsior Scholarship would only aid students with tuition, not living costs such as room and board, student fees and textbooks. The scholarship would also only supplement existing aid rather than replacing it.

The plan would more than likely benefit middle-class families in New York because they receive less tuition aid than low-income families, experts said. Chingos said some lower-income students already have their tuitions covered by existing aid, which makes the Excelsior Scholarship ineffective for them. These students will still have to come up with more than $10,000 on average to pay for living costs to attend school, despite receiving aid from the state, he added.

New York students attending four-year public and private colleges and universities graduate with an average of $29,320 in debt, according to the state. Cuomo in a news release said he hopes the Excelsior Scholarship “will alleviate the crushing burden of student debt and enable thousands of New Yorkers to realize their dream of a college education.”

Sara Goldrick-Rab, a professor of higher education policy and sociology at Temple University, said she approves of Cuomo’s effort, saying it would increase enrollment among lower-income students and get them the jobs they’ll need in the future.

Goldrick-Rab said the plan wasn’t very different from existing free tuition plans that have been implemented around the country, but said she likes that Cuomo extended the offer past two-year community colleges.

“I think that by including public four-year schools, there’s a little less concern that we’re restricting the choices of people who don’t have a lot of money to pay for college,” she said.

To make the plan work better for lower-income students, New York would need cooperation from the federal government, Goldrick-Rab said.

In addition to federal aid, Goldrick-Rab also said New York should modify some of its own policies to help lower-income students get the aid they need to pay for food and other expenses.

In accordance to New York State law, Goldrick-Rab said, people are not eligible for food stamps unless they have a child or if they work at least 20 hours a week. New York state does not count college toward those 20 hours a week, so a student would have to attend college full-time in addition to working 20 hours a week to be eligible for food stamps.

“New York could take steps the way California has … to try to allow students to count their college toward their work requirement,” Goldrick-Rab said.

With the current political climate, featuring a Republican Congress and President-elect who did not make free college tuition a national priority, Chingos said free public college tuition will probably remain a trend among state governments rather than the federal government.

“States are in a much stronger position to do this because they’re the ones that fund their public colleges,” Chingos said.

Published on January 17, 2017 at 10:46 pm

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