Two years of free community college may soon become a reality for 2.1 million students in California through Assembly Bill 2.
The measure is a more aggressive version of 2017’s Assembly Bill 19, or the California College Promise. That program dispersed $46 million to the state’s 114 community colleges with the option to utilize funds to cover the first year of tuition fees for all first-time, full-time students.
Assemblymember Miguel Santiago (D-Los Angeles), the lead author of AB 2, said a free education is the best instrument in the fight against income inequality.
“We owe this effort to the students entering community college this year; we owe it to the economy of California — the fifth-largest in the world; and most importantly, we owe it to our children,” he said.