First Of All, College Is Rarely "Free"
Support for LAist comes from
Community college tuition in California has always
been waived for very low-income students (e.g., yearly income of $39,300 or less for a family of four). And, in fact, no one paid tuition up until the 1980s.
But in 2017, when the legislature started funding community colleges to
provide free tuition for other students through promise programs, some
headlines hailed it as free
college. Many
Let's be clear: It's not free college. It's free
tuition. And, especially in California, there's a big difference.
"Tuition, particularly in California, is only a fraction of the cost of attending college," said California Community Colleges Chancellor