Free community college is coming to San Diego. This fall, the first cohort of 201 students will participate in the San Diego Promise pilot program.
“We want to make sure no individual is denied an opportunity to go to community college,” said Dr. Lynn Neault, vice chancellor of student services at the San Diego Community College District (SDCCD)
Tuition and fees at the California Community College system cost $1,104 annually for in-state students, which is among the lowest in the nation. Yet many SDCCD students face substantial financial challenges as they work towards a degree, school officials said.
In addition to experiencing a high rate of poverty and food insecurity, a number of the students who attend SDCCD are homeless. District officials said that they do not record how many students are homeless, but the problem is so prevalent that colleges within the district maintain food pantries to assist students.
“The problem of homelessness is not unique to our district necessarily,” said Jack Beresford, SDCCD director of communications and public relations. A California State University study, published in January 2016, found that one in 10 of CSU’s approximately 460,000 students are homeless.
Currently, the San Diego Promise program is small enough to be funded from the endowment, but the district plans to initiate a fundraising campaign in the fall to expand the program. The program is currently in its pilot year, and school officials said that they hope to be able to offer it to more students across the district.
San Diego Promise is modeled after more than one hundred other state and city-wide national free community college initiatives. Like other such initiatives, San Diego Promise is a last dollar program, meaning that it is intended to make up the difference in the cost of attendance not already covered by grants and scholarships.
