President Obama surprised many when he unveiled his vision in January for free community college. Some scoffed at the proposal, which would allow students to go to college for free as long as they maintained a 2.5 GPA and made steady progress toward their degree, as too utopian to ever be realized.
The president of Howard University, Dr. Wayne A.I. Frederick, announced an even more grandiose vision for the future of American higher education. Frederick announced that he believed Obama should extend the proposal to include HBCUs to NBC-4 reporters on Wednesday.
Frederick’s proposal underscores a concern among HBCU leaders that free community college could be a disaster for their institutions.
Others, such as Dr. Ivory Toldson, deputy director of the White House Initiative on HBCUs, support the idea of free community college.
“I support the proposal. I supported it as a first step toward universal higher education for the United States,” Toldson said. “We haven’t always had universal K-12 in this country, and I’m sure there were debates when they were proposing that. But it’s time for us to make some steps toward making costs not be a prohibitive factor toward somebody achieving higher education.”
Few would dispute the idea that college is prohibitively expensive and that even community college can represent a financial sacrifice for some students. Yet others said there is a broader picture at stake, concerning the viability of all minority-serving institutions, not just HBCUs.
“I think the whole thing was provocative. Not just President Frederick’s idea, but President Obama’s discussion. Both men’s proposals are interesting, because people are talking about them. So maybe out of this will come a realistic solution,” said Johnny C. Taylor Jr., president and CEO of the Thurgood Marshall College Fund (TCMF).
