Bills would have state foot college cost

Hawaii could soon join other states in offering tuition-free college under legislative proposals to have the state pick up the cost of tuition and other school expenses for needy students enrolled at University of Hawaii community colleges.

The bills seek funding to establish a so-called “last dollar” scholarship program that would kick in for resident students with financial need after all other financial aid is exhausted, including federal and state grants and scholarships. A student’s eligibility and unmet need would be determined through the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

The program stands to benefit more than 1,000 community college students and is expected to attract more students to the seven community college campuses, where full-time resident tuition is $3,024 a year.

According to university data, last academic year there were close to 1,100 UH community college students statewide who were left with an average unmet need of $295 in direct costs, which includes tuition, fees, books, supplies and transportation; living expenses are not counted. The overall unmet need across the community colleges was $1.8 million for the 2015-16 school year.

A bill University of Hawaii officials helped draft calls for a $2.5 million appropriation to establish the program at the community colleges. Other bills propose offering the subsidies to undergraduates at all UH campuses, including UH Manoa, Hilo and West Oahu, which would require a larger investment.

John Morton, UH’s longtime vice president for community colleges, said the strategic plan for community colleges places a priority on affordability and removing cost as a barrier to higher education.

“When we looked at how much aid the students were getting — between the Pell Grants from the federal government (which do not need to be repaid) and the university’s own scholarship programs, the UH Foundation, Kamehameha Schools, employers — against the direct cost, turns out that most of it was covered except for about $1.8 million,” Morton said in an interview. “We thought that it would be a great way to attack the affordability question by basically getting rid of that gap.”

The scholarship program has been dubbed Hawaii’s Promise and is modeled after a similar program in Tennessee, which was the first state to provide tuition-free community college. Unlike Tennessee’s model, which targets graduating high school seniors, eligible students in Hawaii would have to qualify for resident tuition and be enrolled in a degree or certificate program at a community college for six or more credits per semester.

“We’d be able to tell anybody — and that’s what the ‘promise’ is — that if you’re eligible for resident tuition and you have financial need, that your direct cost will be covered by grant aid so you won’t be borrowing money to pay for your tuition or your fees or your books or your transportation,” Morton said.

Morton said the university’s bill seeks an appropriation above the projected cost in anticipation of increased enrollment once the program is established. “We built into the bill a little bit of a cushion so that if this works the way we hope it will, which is to make people realize that they can afford to go to college, that there would be dollars there and we wouldn’t be limited,” Morton said.

For Leeward Community College student Tihemu Muller, the cost of attending school full time forced him to choose between paying rent and tuition.

“Every semester everything goes up. Because of the cost of tuition, the cost of books and everyday survival, I ended up living in my car all semester last semester,” Muller, 43, said. “I came this far, and I didn’t want to drop out because it took me 25 years to come back to school.”

Muller, who now resides in Kaaawa, said he began working right after high school in the retail and tourism industries before deciding to enroll in college in 2015.

“I’ve been through the workforce, and you can only get so far without a degree,” he said.

Muller has since secured enough grants and scholarships to cover his full tuition costs this semester but hopes the proposed Hawaii’s Promise program can help him in his future studies. He plans to eventually pursue a bachelor’s degree in agricultural engineering.

He said it’s been challenging to find financial aid options because he doesn’t fall into the typical categories that receive priority.

“For somebody like me, who’s male and able-bodied, it sort of disqualifies you from need,” he said. “I’m not a mother, I’m not a single parent. I’m an independent adult. I think a program like that would be beneficial for many people.”

The leaders of the House and Senate Higher Education committees have been drafting legislation to establish the scholarship program at all 10 UH campuses.

State Sen. Kaiali‘i Kahele, chairman of the Senate Higher Education Committee, said he’s long been concerned about affordability at the University of Hawaii, where he says “tuition has continued to climb, climb and climb” since the 1990s, when he attended.

“And it’s not just a problem here in Hawaii, but across the nation, where pursuing higher education is almost becoming unattainable for many, many kids and families,” Kahele said.

He added that expanding the program to all undergraduates would help some 4,200 students for an estimated $13.5 million investment.

“What we wanted to do is take it to a higher level and offer it systemwide throughout the entire state,” Kahele said. “We pass a several-billion-dollar budget every year. I think we can carve out $13.5 million to give 4,200 Hawaii residents the opportunity to go to college for free. It’s about how we prioritize our resources. For me education is a top priority.”

The idea of tuition-free college has been gaining popularity. In addition to Tennessee’s program, which inspired a national push for free community college by then-President Barack Obama, Oregon passed legislation for tuition-free community college, and various programs also have been proposed in Kentucky, Rhode Island and New York.

Joni Finney, director of the Institute for Research on Higher Education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, said Hawaii’s proposed program would help the state further its goal of increasing the number of working adults with a college degree. But she said because the proposal would not help cover living expenses, most students likely will still need to work while attending college.

Finney cited the institute’s recent state-by-state analysis of college affordability, which found UH’s community college system is the most affordable public two-year institution in the nation. Still, full-time UH community college students on average have to work 20 hours a week to cover college expenses, the study found.