Community colleges should be tuition-free

To the Editor:

Although my family of eight was poor, I believe that I was lucky to live in Bloomsburg, a college town, because it enabled me to live at home, work a full-time job and several part-time jobs to pay for my college expenses, and graduate debt-free with a bachelor’s degree in education.

This is why I believe that Pennsylvania needs more community colleges to serve those areas where there are potential college students without the financial ability to attend a distant college or university.

I was lucky to have a mother who was the valedictorian of her high school class in 1931, when females were expected not to work so that males would have access to more jobs during the Depression. Her mother died when my mother was in tenth grade; and her father, a factory worker with four children, didn’t have the money to pay for her to attend college, which was a life-long dream of hers.

This is why I believe that Pennsylvania’s community colleges should be tuition-free for the State’s residents. If New Mexico can afford four-year, tuition-free public colleges and universities for its students, Pennsylvania can afford tuition-free community colleges for its students.

I’m sure that Thaddeus Stevens, the so-called father of free public schools in Pennsylvania, would approve of tuition-free community colleges.

David L. Faust

Selinsgrove