Tuition-free community college in New Jersey? Details of Phil Murphy’s plan remain murky

Gov. Phil Murphy pledged during his campaign to eliminate tuition at New Jersey’s community colleges. And in his budget, he proposed $50 million in additional tuition assistance for low-income students, the first step toward making the colleges entirely tuition-free by 2021.

Murphy, a Democrat, said the grants will allow nearly 15,000 more students with household incomes below $45,000 to attend tuition-free starting in the spring of next year.

But his administration has declined to explain how it arrived at those figures, and few people outside the administration seem to have been briefed on how the program would work.

"Nothing more than has been reported," Assemblyman John Burzichelli, a Gloucester County Democrat and member of the budget and appropriations committees, said last week when asked what he knew about the program. "We are still waiting for details on everything."

Details scant on Murphy promises

Several lawmakers said it’s not unusual for governors to lay out a grand vision during a budget address without backing it up with specifics. The budgets of first-year governors in particular tend to take longer to come together, they said.

But more than two months into his term, Murphy has yet to lay out how policies central to his campaign, and included in his $37.4 billion spending plan, will actually work. Another of Murphy's key budget proposals — launching no-questions-asked marijuana sales to adults by the start of next year — similarly came with precious few details on how such a system would operate.

In an era of soaring tuition fees and concerns over college affordability, Democratic and Republican lawmakers agree that offering tuition-free community college is a laudable goal.

More than 150,000 full- and part-time students were enrolled in New Jersey’s community colleges in the fall of 2016, the most recent year for which data are available, and tens of thousands more participate every year in noncredit and customized training programs.

But it’s also a goal of uncertain cost, and Murphy officials will need to provide more information to win over lawmakers by a June 30 deadline to pass a spending plan.

Murphy estimated during his campaign that providing free tuition at the state’s 19 community colleges would cost $200 million, citing an internal analysis and a study by the Campaign for Free College Tuition.

But that study puts a $197.5 million price tag on providing free tuition only to first-year students and says that totally eliminating tuition at New Jersey community colleges would cost about twice that.

Murphy’s office declined to comment on that discrepancy or share its own analysis. Separately, a spokeswoman for the Treasury Department, Jennifer Sciortino, declined to provide details about the administration's $50 million proposal for the coming fiscal year.

“What I can tell you right now is that the additional tuition assistance the governor has proposed will help put community college in reach for roughly 15,000 students who otherwise might not qualify for some combination of federal and state financial aid grants and therefore be forced to forgo the opportunity,” Sciortino said, adding that the "budget process is just beginning" and more information will be forthcoming soon.

Other states offer it

New Jersey would not be alone in offering tuition-free community college to recent high school graduates and adults. At least four other states have tried to move toward that goal, albeit with mixed success.

A law signed last year by Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, for example, was billed as tuition-free college for the middle class but did not apply to most students due to several caveats.

Murphy has pitched tuition-free community college as part of a broader strategy to improve the state's workforce development and increase its economic competitiveness. The federal government also "plays a big role" in the cost of community college, Murphy said during the campaign, so “this won't be as costly as many critics might have you believe.”

It’s true that many low-income students already qualify for Federal Pell grants and other federal and state assistance, but fewer students at higher income levels do, making it more expensive for the state to provide them free tuition.

The average full-time community college student pays $3,853 for tuition in the current school year, according to state data. They are also assessed an average of $1,043 in annual fees that Murphy has given no indication would be covered under his proposal.

Part-time students pay an average of $1,561 in tuition plus $427 in fees.

There is no guarantee that lawmakers will go along with Murphy's three-year tuition plan even if they approve his $50 million proposal this year.

Given that, said Frederick Keating, president of Rowan College at Gloucester County, some of the initial $50 million in funding should go toward expanding the NJ STARS program, which provides free community college tuition to students who rank in the top 15 percent of their high school class regardless of income.

Doing so, Keating said, would help keep some of the state’s brightest students in New Jersey, which is the worst in the country when it comes to losing high-school graduates to other places.

It would also deliver some financial relief to middle-class students who do not qualify for federal or state assistance but still struggle to afford college, he said.

“Yes, I think, [put] some more money into tuition aid grants” for low-income students, Keating said. “But the idea’s also not to forget those who are right above that economic level that are now suffering in New Jersey.”

Email: pugliese@northjersey.com