Higher education can help students attain greater lifetime earnings and provide economic benefits to society. However, going to college is increasingly expensive, and the high cost is contributing to a rapid growth in student debt and a growing financial burden on Americans. To help expand access to and reduce the cost of college education, many policymakers and advocates have put forward nationwide “free college” proposals.

While the United States does not currently have a nationwide free college program, a number of such initiatives have been proposed in the past few years. During the 2020 Presidential campaign, for example, Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren each proposed a debt-free program. More recently, the Biden Administration proposed making community college tuition free as part of the American Families Plan. This piece provides an overview of different types of free college programs, the potential budgetary cost and distributional impact of such initiatives, and arguments for and against a nationwide program.

Approaches to Free College Programs

Free college programs generally refer to initiatives that reduce a student’s cost of attending college, which typically includes tuition as well as living expenses such as room and board. However, free college programs can vary greatly by factors like the amount of tuition and other expenses included, the type of institutions covered (public vs private), the enrollment criteria for the student (full-time vs part-time), and any eligibility requirements (such as income caps or minimum grade requirements). Below are some of the most common types of programs, grouped by how they cover a student’s tuition and other costs of attendance. To illustrate how each program works, we use an example where tuition costs $10,000, room and board costs $12,000, and a student receives $7,000 in grant aid (scholarships and grants that don’t have to be paid back).

• Last-dollar tuition-free programs mean that the government would pay any tuition remaining after the student’s grant aid is applied. In the example above, the $7,000 of grant aid would be applied to the cost of tuition and the government would cover the remaining $3,000 of the tuition bill. The student would be responsible for covering the $12,000 cost of room and board.
• First-dollar tuition-free programs mean that the government would pay for tuition before any grant aid is applied and the student can use that aid to cover other costs of attendance. In the same example, the government would pay the $10,000 tuition bill in full and the $7,000 in grant aid would partially cover the cost of room and board. The student would be responsible for covering the remaining $5,000 cost of room and board.
• Debt-free programs mean that the government would cover the full cost of attendance. Using the same example as before, the government would cover the $10,000 tuition bill as well as the $12,000 cost of room and board. In this example, students eligible for the program would not receive any grant aid since the entire cost of attendance is covered.

Generally, debt-free programs would generate the highest cost to the government and the lowest cost to the student; last-dollar programs would place more of a financial burden on the student. Programs can also be a hybrid of the types mentioned above.

Are There Currently Any Free College Programs in the United States?

The United States currently does not have a nationwide system for free college, but some state and local governments have programs that provide free post-secondary education.

The Tennessee Promise, for example, is a last-dollar program enacted in 2015 that covers tuition for state residents attending community colleges or other associate degree programs in Tennessee. Another example is New York’s Excelsior Scholarship program — a last-dollar program that covers tuition for state residents at certain two- and four-year schools in New York, but restricts eligibility to families earning less than $125,000 annually.

One of the first local programs was the Kalamazoo Promise in Michigan, a first-dollar program established in 2005 to provide tuition payments to in-state colleges for students graduating from the Kalamazoo School District. While the full economic impact of the program is still unknown, the program has a number of pros and cons. On one hand, the program increased college enrollment, degree attainment, and earnings for program recipients — an analysis by the Upjohn Institute found that for every $1 paid in benefits, the average eligible student can expect to earn more than an additional $4. It also yielded some economic benefits for the area, such as more state funding for the district and the construction of new schools. On the other hand, the program by itself is limited and hasn’t been enough to overcome some of the area’s key challenges. For example, Kalamazoo still faces high rates of poverty and inequality, and there is little evidence that the program has improved social mobility in the area. Likewise, the increase in college completion rates due to the program has been largely been concentrated among students in white and mid- to high-income families.

As of 2018, about 15 states and an estimated 350 localities had some version of a free college program — and many other state and local governments had proposed such programs.