New Jersey has largely dismissed the call for free college tuition in public schools within the state. At the state’s annual Senate hearing on funding for higher education, Gabrielle Charette, executive director of of the agency that oversees New Jersey’s student loan program, dismissed the idea.
The conversation was brought about as a result of the newly imposed New York Excelsior Scholarship, an accessible college program that will make tuition free for over 940,000 middle class families beginning this fall.
The New York program is, however, rife with complications. For example, students accepted must be New York citizens, full-time students earning 30 credits per calendar year, and live/work in New York for the same amount of time they received the scholarship following graduation.
“I don’t think we are prepared today to discuss the New York plan,” Charette said in an nj.com interview . “I think that there is a lot that needs to be studied there, and I think we want to see how that works.”
Another reason for the dismissal of tuition free-college education plans in New Jersey is the claim that the state already does more than enough to help its citizens pay for higher education. New research from the University of California at Berkeley shows that New Jersey is one of only three states (the others being California and Wyoming) that provides more aid to low-income college students than the largest federal grant program does.
“I think we are cutting edge in a lot of ways,” said Rochelle Hendricks, the state’s secretary of higher education, in an nj.com interview
On average, New Jersey’s students spend $18,032.67 yearly on tuition alone — this does not include the cost of room and board, textbooks, and other expenses their school may require.
Charette’s organization, Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (HESAA), states its mission is to “provide students and families with financial and informational resources for students to pursue their education beyond high school.” It is the primary source of tuition aid in the state, run by the state government. The organization offers a variety of both need-based and merit-based programs.
The most notable program run by HESAA is the NJCLASS loan, which offers low-cost rates on supplemental loans to New Jersey residents attending an eligible in-state or out-of-state school and out-of-state students attending a school in New Jersey.
NJCLASS has received criticism through online petitions and has even gained media attention as being a corrupt program responsible for “preying on unsuspecting borrowers, trapping them into student loans they know can never be repaid, and crushing futures,” as claimed by an online petition with nearly 1,000 signatures.
Additionally, HESAA says it has a policy to help some families if the children who were supposed to benefit from the loans die. Emails to staffers recently revealed instructions to not tell families that they may qualify for help unless they explicitly ask for that information.
“Families of deceased borrowers (or surviving cosigners) must inquire if HESAA has a policy on loan forgiveness,” a supervising staffer wrote in an email to employees in May 2016. “We should not be volunteering this information.”
In response to HESAA’s negative attention, governor candidate John Wisniewski is proposing an act called New Jersey’s 21st Century Workforce Scholarship Act, which would act similarly to New York’s Excelsior Scholarship and replace HESAA’s NJCLASS loan program. According to Wisniewski’s website, New Jersey is projected to spend $158 million dollars less on supporting our public colleges and universities than it did seven years ago, a figure which would be altered by the enactment of his proposed program.
“With respect to securing sustainable funding, using money solely from Educational Opportunity Fund and Tuition Aid Grants is not sufficient. The plan would call on the Department of Education to determine how many students annually are eligible to take advantage of the program and mandate a reallocation of corporate business tax incentive programs (e.g., corporate welfare) to fully fund the scholarships,” his website says.
This is currently the only public alternate plan to NJCLASS, and Wisniewski is one of the only NJ officials in the public eye discussing the possibility of free tuition. Despite this, many citizens argue the importance of free tuition.
““Free tuition is a must,” said taxpayer Dominique Estevi. “The government needs to give the same opportunity to everyone; it is the government’s responsibility to educate its students.”
With the state’s gubernatorial election this November quickly approaching, advocates for free or lowered tuition could see this once unthought-off concept brought to reality.
HESAA’s NJCLASS Fall 2017/Spring 2018 Plan:
http://www.hesaa.org/Documents/NJCLASSInterestRates.pdf
According to the New Jersey State Data Center, the most recent available data shows that the average household has an income of $115,240, making the average student eligible for New Jersey’s 21st Century Workforce Scholarship Act, John Wisniewski’s proposed plan.