SOME DEMOCRATIC 2020 CANDIDATES WANT TUITION-FREE COMMUNITY COLLEGE, BUT SCHOOLS MAY NOT BE READY: Too many new students will overwhelm the system, even if they are accompanied by additional funding, community college leaders and experts say. There’s no real definition of what success looks like for community college students, some of whom are interested in a leg up on a job while others are aiming for transfers to four-year institutions. And the complexities involved in transferring community college class credits to four-year schools remain daunting and largely unsolved.
— “If you make college free and then enroll all these new students, it would just make the problem even worse,” said John Mullane, president of College Transfer Solutions, an advocacy group working to enable students to fully transfer their credits from a two-year college to a four-year university.
— “If the schools are having a problem right now serving the students that they have, and if you’re giving them more students, how is that going to help them to retain and graduate the current students that they have?” he asked.