PSA State Community Colleges -- MD, RI, TN, CA, OR, NY

[dfrecore]

Just a reminder for residents of the following states: Maryland, Rhode Island, Tennessee, California, New York, Oregon... Remember your state-funded community colleges have no tuition and fees are ridiculously cheap. California caps fees at $46 per unit making all classes under $150 each! New York goes as far as up to a 4-year degree.

Right now with COVID and everyone is online, it is a great time to take advantage of your local community college!

For CA, not all schools participate in giving free tuition - you have to be a first time student for most schools.  For everyone else, it's $46/cr, but that does not equate to less than $150 for ALL courses - it's just for 3cr courses.  Lots of schools have 4cr or 5cr courses (English 101 is 4cr for a LOT of schools, my daughter's is one of those).

Schools were given leeway in how they wanted to use their funds from the Promise program, many gave more money to lower-income students, or gave more money towards books for students, or did a combination of things, so that it's not free at all.

Also, there are 3 quarter-based schools (out of 113), so their costs are $31/cr - but it ends up being the same price overall for a 2yr degree.

For the first 2 years of a publicly funded school, California caps the fee at $46 per credit on the semester scale. So 3 credit classes are $138. Some colleges are imposing other fees due to the tuition free for state funded schools. The public community colleges did get a cap. Still a massive improvement on many of the alternatives people are using. The local college here says no tuition but has "fees" instead which is why I put fees are cheap

Of course for the states I listed there are a lot of catch-22s, but for the majority low-income people on this forum, they can probably get those options, if they live in those states, for a very affordable/cheap price if they need an RA credit.

I did not say tuition wasn't capped, I said that only 3cr courses are under $150.  4cr courses are $184 for instance.

Also, I don't think most people on this forum are low-income, that's kind of a big leap.  Not wanting to pay a lot of money for college is not limited to people who are low-income - in fact, I'm willing to bet that most of us make enough money that we don't qualify for any type of aid at all, and may be paying cash, which is the reason we're trying to make sure we don't overpay.