Two Colleges in Twin Cities Offering Free Tuition to Inner-City Students
MINNEAPOLIS
Two colleges in the Twin Cities are offering two years of tuition-free schooling to inner-city students who graduate from public high schools in Minneapolis or St. Paul.
Organizers hope the program will help at least 200 students attend Minneapolis Community and Technical College or St. Paul College next fall. Both are two-year schools.
In 2007, Metropolitan State University, a four-year school, will join the program.
MCTC President Philip Davis says the idea was prompted by reports that less than 5 percent of minority ninth-graders in Minnesota’s two largest cities earn a four-year college degree by the time they turn 25.
“That’s something we can’t let go unchallenged,” he says. “We wanted to remove real and perceived barriers, so we said let’s just say the first two years of college are free. We wanted to create hope.”
Shane Harris, a senior at Patrick Henry High School in Minneapolis, says the program could change the way some students think about their future. He says some of his friends don’t know much about financial aid and have parents who didn’t attend college.
