Can Massachusetts learn from Tennessee on how to navigate free college programs?

Eric Quaidoo said when considering where — and even whether — to go to college, he and his friends worried about one thing: how would they and their families pay for it? So when Massachusetts announced it was offering free community college to any resident who hadn’t yet earned a bachelor’s degree, the Pittsfield citizen made up his mind.

“I was really ecstatic because it’s really expensive going to school,” said Quaidoo, who came to Western Massachusetts from Ghana at age 6. Today he’s studying nursing at Berkshire Community College while balancing a part-time job, putting in 32 hours a week as a nursing assistant to help support his family in Pittsfield and in Ghana’s capital of Accra.

The initiative, dubbed MassEducate, covers tuition, fees and allowances for books to any Massachusetts resident without a four-year degree. Since its launch last year, overall enrollment at the state’s public two-year schools has spiked by 14%. Remarkably, while freshman enrollment nationwide is up, the number of first-year students at the state’s community colleges has surged 30%.

For many, like Quaidoo, the program has been “life-changing.” But while the program has opened doors to higher education for thousands, it’s also increasing pressure on the state’s community colleges.

Challenges of a tuition-free surge

Nationwide, fewer than half of community college students graduate within six years — and Massachusetts’ rate is just 34%. College leaders say that’s, in part, because many students struggle to balance work and their education. Experts say that as the number of enrolled students climbs, the gap between their needs and available resources is widening.

“The challenges that community colleges face are just fierce,” said Richard Murnane, an economist at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a researcher at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His latest research shows that even before the launch of MassEducate, the share of low-income students at Massachusetts’ community colleges had more than doubled over the past 20 years.

While many of these students are highly motivated, Murnane said, “most of them have not gone to the best public schools in Massachusetts, so they come with challenges, particularly in mathematics.”

This gap is particularly pronounced in science, technology and engineering fields, according to Veronica Minaya, a researcher at Columbia University’s Community College Research Center. Minaya said that carries consequences for enrollment and workforce development.

“You are losing a lot of students through that pipeline, especially at community colleges without the right resources,” she explained.

Minaya said even with committed faculty and staff, motivated students often struggle due to pressures of studying and working without a safety net to cover their escalating living expenses.

Straining faculty and staff

In Massachusetts, the increase in community college enrollment has also stretched the capacity of faculty and staff, some of whom are working part-time, juggling multiple jobs and side gigs to support their own families.

For the past 30 years, Joseph Nardoni has taught English at Middlesex Community College in Lowell, where overall enrollment is up 12% this fall.

“I haven’t seen anything like this at all,” said Nardoni, who also serves as vice president of the union that represents faculty and staff at the state’s 15 community colleges. Nardoni described the increase of students as “mind-boggling” and a major reason why the union is asking the Legislature to fund a salary bump.

With starting salaries that range from $58,000 to $61,000, Nardoni said, community colleges like Middlesex struggle to attract enough full-time faculty to keep up with demand.

“We don’t have enough advisors to advise our students, and in a timely manner,” he said. “So oftentimes what advisors try to do is shrink their appointment times from 30 minutes down to 15 minutes in order to handle the greater influx of students.”

At Cape Cod Community College in Barnstable, where overall enrollment is up 30%, administrators say they had to close applications early this month to give faculty more time to advise students.

Lessons from Tennessee

A decade ago, Tennessee launched the nation’s first statewide free community college program , an initiative to make higher education more accessible and meet workforce demands. Since then, 36 other states including Massachusetts have followed Tennessee’s lead , offering some form of free tuition, according to College Promise, a nonprofit that advocates for such programs.

Tennessee’s last-dollar scholarship program has been credited with helping many students earn associate degrees. But it has also raised concerns about the potential for students to become “stuck” in two-year colleges, unable to transfer to four-year institutions to earn a bachelor’s degree.

Celeste Carruthers, an economist at University of Tennessee Knoxville who studied the impact of Tennessee’s program, found that while free tuition was crucial to attracting students who otherwise wouldn’t go to college, it didn’t guarantee other vital needs like academic coaching and financial support for living expenses.

“There’s still a great deal of need beyond tuition, like advising,” said Carruthers, whose latest research finds an advising program for adults 25 and older in Tennessee has been successful in helping students get through college.

Massachusetts’ free-tuition program has undoubtedly opened doors to education for many who might have otherwise been shut out. At Berkshire Community College, enrollment this fall was up 15% over 2023, and administrators say they’re projecting enrollment to be up 28% this spring.

But with graduation rates still low and resources spread thin, the state’s community colleges will need to balance this new demand with the resources required to support students’ long-term success.

For now, students like Eric Quaidoo in Pittsfield remain hopeful. He’s dreaming of earning a bachelor’s degree, while incorporating his passion for recording music.

“I love the brain — it really fascinates me,” he said. “I want to do something in psychology.”

If Quaidoo earns a four-year degree, he’ll beat the national odds: Only a third of students who start at community colleges transfer to four-year schools, and just 16% earn a bachelor’s degree.

For more on the promise and realities of free community college, listen to the episode “The real cost of free” from GBH’s higher ed podcast College Uncovered.