Maine Ends Free Community College Scholarship
Credit: Portland Press Herald / Getty Images- Maine is ending its free community college program after three years.
- The class of 2025 will be the final group of high school graduates to benefit from the scholarship.
- Maine established the Free College Scholarship in 2022.
- It appears to be the first U.S. state to end an existing free community college program.
Class of 2025 high school graduates will be the final group of Mainers to benefit from the state’s free community college scholarship.
Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat, signed Maine’s latest budget into law June 23. By declining to fund future graduating classes, the budget effectively sunsets the Free College Scholarship with the most recent group of high school graduates.
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Maine launched the Free College Scholarship in fall 2022 and extended it one year later. This scholarship covers the remaining tuition and mandatory fees of recent high school graduates after all other financial aid has been applied.
According to the Maine Community College System (MCCS), 17,826 eligible students have enrolled at Maine’s community colleges since the Free College Scholarship launched. Tuition and fees are $4,156 a year for a full-time student.
David Daigler, president of MCCS, called the move “dispiriting.”
“We’ll continue our mission to provide affordable, relevant education and training that prepares people for good jobs in Maine — but it will be harder to reach all the deserving, motivated, and hard-working students who came to the colleges because of the Free College Scholarship,” Daigler said in a statement.
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Maine’s Free College Scholarship covers all people living in Maine who graduated from high school in 2022, 2023, 2024, or 2025. People who earned the equivalent of a high school diploma, such as a GED certificate, during those years could also qualify.
There are no income or age limits to the scholarship.
It is rare, if not unprecedented, for a state to end its free community college program.
Morley Winograd, former CEO of the Campaign for Free College Tuition, previously told BestColleges that, as of 2023, no state had ever offered free college education as a public benefit and then taken that subsidy away from residents.
“We have never seen a state say, ‘We hope you enjoyed free college, but your brothers and sisters won’t get it,’” he said.
Most states in the U.S. currently offer free college tuition with varying degrees of eligibility limits, according to the Campaign for Free College Tuition.