I overheard a couple of guys talking on the el train. One of them was saying how cheap it was to live in Nevada, no sales tax, no income tax and he said, even the state college is free for residents.
Now as far as I can tell this isn’t correct, is it?
But it got me to thinking are there any states in the USA that offer free tution to state residents. I’m thinking if any do, it must be at a local or junior (AKA community) college level.
Have any in the past? I thought California might have had free community college in the past, though I’m not sure.
I’m not talking about grants or scholorships or loans, I’m mean colleges that just offer classes to anyone in terms of free tution. Kind of like how you can go to high school for free only on the college level.
The military service academies are the only ones I know of. In fact, since the students are considered on active duty while attending, they get paid. Of course, they also have service commitments for several years after graduating, so depending on your definition of “free,” they may or may not be.
A lot of the community colleges in Mississippi offer free tuition to residents of local counties, though not of the entire state. Examples here and here.
Business Week puts out a list of tuition-free colleges from time to time. It’s inconvenient to click through their slide shows, so I’ll list their colleges here:
Alice Lloyd College
Barclay College
Berea College
CUNY Teacher Academy
College of the Ozarks
Cooper Union
Curtis Institute of Music
Deep Springs College
Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering
U.S. Military Academy
U.S. Naval Academy
U.S. Air Force Academy
U.S. Coast Guard Academy
U.S. Merchant Marine Academy
Webb Institute
William E. Macaulay Honors College at CUNY
The University of the People is on one of their lists, but I didn’t include it above because it’s not accredited.
What about state military colleges like Virginia Military Institute or The Citadel? AFAIK attending one of those doesn’t cary any service commitment for the military.
Ha! Cost of living is close to CA. Some things are cheaper but it’s not like going to Mayberry. Two-buck Chuck at Trader Joe’s in expensive parts of CA is Three-buck Chuck in NV.
Definitely not true. 6.85% according to Wikipedia, up to 8.1% is Las Vegas and 7.75% in Reno. I suppose if you lived in the wilderness up north and commuted to Oregon to do all your shopping, then you wouldn’t pay tax.
True, but you have to pay your taxes to the casinos. AFAIK New Hampshire is the only state that has neither form of tax, except for people with high investment income have tax on that income.
As Friedo says, they’re not free, over $10,000 in tuition. I’ll write the registrar and demand a refund because of these two guys said otherwise. Both CA and NV college systems are hemorrhaging money, and I’ve heard tales that the UCs are preferring out of state students because their tuition is higher.
UNLV certainly wasn’t free when I went there. There was a “Millenium Scholarship” that was available at one point. It did offset a good portion of our tuition, but not all of it.
Texas universities are free if you’re blind or at least severely visually impaired. The appropriate state office picks up the tab. Called the Commission for the Blind way back when, I believe they may have changed their name. (I actually checked into this for myself, as my eyesight is terrible, but since it’s correctible to 20/20 with glasses, I could not be covered.)
Some states offer programs for people who want to enter certain professions, like teaching. You have to pay for it up front, but you have your loans forgiven after a certain period. If you change your mind, however, you’re on the hook for the whole amount.
At VMI, all the students must join ROTC; however, it’s only those on ROTC scholarships who incur obligated service. Personal note: My father and one of my older brothers graduated from VMI.
In a practical sense most of the Jr colleges in the US are very low cost, and if you keep up your grades there are many local and regional sources for grants for both Jr Colleges and 4 year colleges. If you are willing to put the push ups into searching out and applying for grants, and maintaining a very good GPA you can graduate from a decent four year college without much out of pocket tuition cost. The flip side is that you can’t be an indifferent student or an academic slacker and do this. You need to be running on all cylinders.
It’s amazing how many grants etc. are out there for good students if you start digging.
True. It really depends on where this question is supposed to lead. I had a full-ride scholarship to Tulane which is a very expensive private university but it had an obscure agreement with the state to provide X number of full tuition scholarships in exchange for an agreement it made with the state of Louisiana in the 1800’s. That was at the discretion of the state legislature for how they were given out and there were no other strict requirements except being a state resident who could keep up the grades after being admitted.
There are a bunch of odd scholarships around if you look hard enough and some pay for almost everything but they don’t apply to everyone as a whole.
Deep Springs college was mentioned above and that is a strange one. It is a working ranch with only 26 students and everyone gets a full scholarship in exchange for work and living there among the faculty. There are other odd programs at other colleges as well that are tuition-free but the general public can’t just sign up for them.