Everyone in This City Can Get an Associate Degree for Free

It’s great - but there’s just one problem

Ric Edelman: It's Thursday, June 8th. Everybody in Boston can now go to community college for free. This is regardless of your age, your income or your immigration status. It covers three years of tuition and fees at six institutions. Not only that, it pays up to $250 per semester for textbooks and transportation. It even pays existing debt of up to 2500 bucks if you've got an outstanding balance that any one of these six colleges: Benjamin Franklin Cummings Institute of Technology, Bunker Hill Community College, Massasoit Community College, Mass Bay Community College, Roxbury Community College and the Urban College of Boston. The program pays for an associate's degree or certificate program for everybody in Boston.  

Now, I want to ask you this. Why would you spend  quarter of $1 million to pay for a four-year undergrad degree when you can get an associate's degree literally for free. Now, there's a legitimate reason why some people would agree to pursue that four-year grad degree. I mean, if you're among one of those who's going to change the world. Yeah, knock yourself out. Go to Harvard. That's right. In Cambridge. But if you're going to major in - I hate to call it this, but can we speak frankly... If you're going to major in a pedestrian degree, entering a pedestrian career... (I don't mean to knock it. I'm talking about 95% of the people in this country are in that category, by the way, including me; I went to a state college you know, I didn't go to one of those elite Ivy League schools)...there are some of us who ought to go to those elite schools because they are going to be our nation's future political leaders, corporate titans, innovators in medicine and science.  

Some folks need to go, frankly, to MIT or Caltech. But the vast majority of us, frankly, don't need to do that. Our lives will be just fine. The key is getting the education, achieving the certification so that you can become a nurse or a schoolteacher or an engineer or an accountant. But if we can get that education for free. Explain to me the rationale, the justification for spending money, hundreds of thousands of dollars, often that you really don't have. And times two or times three or times four the number of children in your household. Is there really economic justification for this?  

Now, there's a flip side to this whole conversation. While we're noting the excitement at the new innovative opportunity to get a college degree at little to no cost, Boston is not alone. In New York State, pretty much everybody can get a full four-year degree, not merely a community associate's degree, less in Boston. And it's not just the fact that so many can get free education. There's a flip side to this.  

Someone somewhere is paying for this. I mean, Boston is providing the money for these schools to operate, the salaries for the faculty and the administration. Where's the money coming from? Well, if it's not coming from the students by virtue of tuition and fees. It's coming from somebody else. It's either coming from donors, and I don't know that community colleges are well known for their endowments, or it's coming from the city's budget or the state's budget. And that means taxpayers.  

So who's footing the bill, really? And is this affordable? Is it sustainable? Is that money that we should be using for this purpose as opposed to using the money for other social need? This is a raging debate in America today. And all I can tell you is that in this debate of whether or not taxpayers should be footing the bill, the governments in many cases at the state and local level are moving ahead of the voter by saying college is free even before I think the voters are really focusing on this issue in terms of the size of the state budget or the city budget.  

So pay attention to this as someone who's planning to spend money to go to college, as well as someone who is writing the checks as a taxpayer, because this situation is going to be growing pretty soon. College everywhere will, in fact be free. Great news for your financial planning efforts. Questionable news, since you're footing the bill as a taxpayer.  

This is our future. We're going to have to come to grips with it one way or another. You need to avoid getting into student debt. You need to learn how to get a college degree that is far cheaper, far easier, far less time consuming than what you have probably been assuming. And in fact, I've got a really terrific way for you to learn about all this. Watch my Master Class. How to Prevent College from Ruining Your Life. The class is free. It's online. You can watch any time.  

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