New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, appeared with Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and state education leaders in an event hailing the new program, which would begin this fall and is estimated to cost $163 million per year.
Students from families making up to $100,000 a year would be eligible in the program’s first year, and by the third year that would increase to $125,000 a year.
It’s a big step forward in a national trend: In the last decade, 85 states and municipalities have created similar scholarship programs, most of them for community college tuition. And the idea got plenty of airing in last year’s presidential election, when it was championed by first Sanders and then Hillary Clinton.
Still, now that free public college is closer to being a reality, the cheerleading is accompanied by nit-picking among some college affordability advocates. Here are some “catches” in the New York State plan.
- It’s likely to benefit higher-income New Yorkers more.
Tamara Draut, vice president of policy and research at Demos, a progressive-leaning think tank, praised the bill in a statement, but with a caveat: “The bill is what’s known as a ‘last-dollar’ program.”
Translation: Students must first apply for, and use, other money like federal Pell Grants, before turning to the scholarship. That, in turn, means that low-income students have less to gain from the scholarship than do students from families who are too wealthy to qualify for those grants.
By the way, the U.S. Department of Education and the IRS recently made it more cumbersome to apply for federal student aid such as Pell Grants. And, President Trump’s budget proposal would withhold money from those grants.