Thread by @mmilleradams

From the start, the challenge of federal #FreeCollege has been making it work in 50 states with 50 higher ed systems (more, really since a state like mine - Michigan - has no system) and, more specifically, how not to reward states for under-investing in higher ed. (1/9)

@chingos wrote about these risks a few years back but my sense is that advocacy and policy folks didn't pay a lot of attention at the time, assuming they could be managed down the road. (2/9) nytimes.com/2019/12/20/ups…

Reality has now set in as House Democratic staff work on the budget reconciliation bill that would set a federal-state free-college partnership in motion. See @kevincarey1's valuable thread about how the sausage-making is going. (3/9)

https://twitter.com/kevincarey1/status/1436355384248254467

@urbaninstitute has now weighed in with some ideas about how to make the plan more equitable and effective. (4/9) urban.org/urban-wire/mak…

My 16 years of #CollegePromise research have taught me a few important lessons. One of the biggest is that it is a very bad idea to over-promise and under-deliver when it comes to free college. This is a very popular idea, and expectations are high. (5/9) pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021…

If you want states to buy in to a federal-state partnership, you need to offer terms that are easy to accept and hard to refuse. Medicaid expansion provides troubling lessons -- even with the feds covering almost the entire cost, 12 states still refuse to participate. (6/9)

Ensuring federal funding is generous enough to deliver on the promise of tuition-free cc -- and raising the political costs for state leaders who opt out -- is the only way to get closer to a national system. (7/9)

Today, the ease of navigating the pathway into and through higher ed is deeply conditioned by the state or locality in which one happens to live. It's the downside to federalism. But 15 years of state and local free-college experimentation, upjohn.org/promise/ (8/9)

... an expanding research base, energetic advocacy (@College_Promise @FreeCollegeNow @RiseFreeOrg), bipartisan state action (@TNPromise, @RepDrewHansen), earlier legislation, and Pres. Biden's election, have gotten us closer than we have ever been. Let's get it right. (9/9)