Senate advances bill to offer tuition-free community college for low, middle-income students

The Virginia Senate will soon consider a bill to give all low- to middle-income students the chance to attend community college tuition free under a plan called the G3 initiative unanimously approved by the Education and Health committee Thursday morning.

The bill, SB1405, is called the G3 initiative, which stands for Get Skilled, Get a Job, Give Back. Gov. Ralph Northam first introduced this plan in December 2019 with a $145 million plan. In his latest budget amendments from December 2020, Northam included $36 million in his budget amendments for fiscal year 2022 for the plan, but $34.5 million will also be used from the budget passed in March 2020 for G3.

Megan Healy, the chief workforce advisor for Northam, presented the bill to the higher education subcommittee on Monday. The bill would allow any low to middle-income student who applies for financial aid to receive full tuition coverage for any of Virginia’s 23 community colleges. The bill not only provides free tuition, Healy said, but it also gives an extra grant for low-income students to cover additional costs for transportation, food security and child care.

“We know when we hear about tuition free community college movements, [that we can] pay for tuition, but there’s still life to pay for,” she said.

The plan aims to provide jobs for high demand areas defined in the bill as “a discipline or field in which there is a shortage of skilled workers to fill current and anticipated additional job vacancies” as determined by the Virginia Board of Workforce Development.

Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, a former administrator at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College, praised the bill for providing stipends outside of only covering tuition, saying, “I have, in over 20 years, encountered so many students who would have been successful had they been able to go full time rather than part time in pursuit of academic credentials.”

Glenn Dubois, the chancellor of the Virginia Community College System, also supported the bill during the committee session.

“We are very very confident that we are ready to implement this program,” Dubois said. “It’s probably the most innovative financial program that I have seen in my near 40 year career.”

The bill allows students to gain “stackable” skills, DuBois said, meaning that skills are gained incrementally such that someone could stop after six months with some marketable skills and then come back later if needed to complete a full associate degree.

The Finance and Appropriations committee is set to discuss the bill next week.