A steep drop in community college tuition typically sparks significant enrollment increases of recent high school graduates without diverting many of them from four-year, public institutions, suggesting the price cut makes higher education more attainable for financially struggling families.
When examining the race and ethnicity of these community college newcomers, however, there’s a notable exception impacting public university enrollment. African-American freshmen are more likely than Whites to access the cheaper tuition, despite being academically qualified and prepared for four-year universities.
Those are among the findings of a new study published in this month’s issue of American Economic Journal: Economic Policy. The report concludes that regardless of race and other demographics, the cheaper community college tuition fuels growth in the number of people seeking postsecondary education without lowering overall academic success and rates of two-year degree attainment.
“Reduced community college tuition induced students who would not have attended college of any type to enroll,” the report states.
The report, titled “College on the Cheap: Consequences of Community College Tuition Reductions,” was authored by Dr. Jeffrey Denning, an assistant professor in economics at Brigham Young University. Denning’s research focuses on labor economics and public economics, especially the economics of education, such as student responses to postsecondary price sensitivity.
The impetus for Denning’s report stemmed from “America’s College Promise,” a January 2015 proposal by then-President Barack Obama to make community college tuition-free for high school graduates in order to boost their college-going numbers.
Because such initiatives were scant among two-year colleges at the time, Denning studied tuition prices over a 20-year period ending in 2015 at the 50-plus, public community colleges in Texas that are scattered in urban and rural areas and had enrollments varying from 4,000 to 60,000-plus. Regarding college districts that drastically cut their sticker prices for a variety of reasons, Denning studied their year-to-year enrollment figures, along with annual head counts of graduates from public high schools in that state before and after tuition was slashed.
