Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer plans to urge state lawmakers to pass legislation that would provide free community college tuition for all high school graduates during her sixth State of the State speech on Wednesday.
Whitmer also prioritized community college access in her annual address last year. State lawmakers responded by temporarily lowering the minimum age for free tuition from 25 to 21 years old. The Democratic governor now wants to expand the program by removing all age requirements for free community college, according to details of her plan provided to The Associated Press by Whitmer’s office.
Whitmer’s administration created the Michigan Reconnect program in 2021, aiming to increase the percentage of the state’s workforce with a postsecondary degree or training from 50.5% to 60% by 2030. It made Michigan residents 25 years and older eligible for free community college tuition.
I’m usually against free college, but this is actually a really great idea. It makes education available to everyone, without the additional risk of government mismanagement hamstringing our world-class universities in the process.
Why are you usually against free college?
Because I see the state of public school funding in the US, and I think it’s utterly, ludicrously naive to think that our universities will somehow magically avoid the same fate. We live in a world where there’s a very real possibility that Trump is elected again, and the people advocating for free college don’t seem to be able to put two and two together to realize that this would put Trump’s government in complete control of the funding of the universities that he condemns as “liberal brainwashing”.
The push for all universities to be free in the US is nothing but utopian wishful thinking that ignores the actual state of US politics, and will have disastrous real-world consequences for the already shaky state of education in the US.
Making community college free seems like a pretty ideal compromise though - everyone gets access to college, and the ability of our universities to take advantage of funding through tuition to ensure that their quality remains among the best in the world is unimpeded.
Personally, it doesn’t really matter if it’s Biden or Trump. The US will continue breaking fossil fuel records regardless of who sits in the oval office. We have already triggered climate tipping points that will cascade for centuries, even if we stopped global co2 production tomorrow. I predict collapse before or around 2030.