Maine community college leaders and students breathed a sigh of relief after lawmakers narrowly passed a supplemental budget permanently funding the state’s free community college program, albeit with some cost-saving tweaks. Gov. Janet Mills, who proposed and has been a driving force behind the program, signed the legislation Friday.
“This biennial budget should send a clear message to every young person in Maine: if you are willing to work hard and build your future here, Maine is ready to invest in your success,” Mills said in a news release.
The free college program began in 2022 to support high school classes affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with hopes of making it permanent down the line. It covered tuition and fees at Maine community colleges for those who graduated from 2020 through 2023 and was later extended to the Classes of 2024 and 2025. But last summer, the Maine Legislature’s Appropriations and Financial Affairs Committee threw the program into limbo when lawmakers raised concerns about the program’s long-term sustainability and declined to make it permanent.
The move left Maine on the brink of becoming the first state to establish and then take away free college. But after months of dialogue with the governor, community college leaders and students, and an outpouring of public support for the program, the Legislature ultimately voted in favor of sustaining a less expensive version of the program.
David Daigler, president of the Maine Community College System, said the program’s future felt uncertain to him “right down to the wire. I was taking nothing for granted.” But that anxiety has now been replaced with a “sense of jubilation” on campuses and among high school students who now know for certain they can take advantage of the program.
When Maine’s program hung in the balance, Daigler said he heard from a high school counselor that students “used up a full box of Kleenex because they realized they weren’t going to have enough money to go to college” if the program didn’t continue.
“The free college program gives those very students the opportunity to continue their education,” he said.
To get there, Daigler and other program advocates had to make some concessions. Going forward, the program will cover tuition but not student fees, which amount to roughly $600 per semester. Because it’s a last-dollar program, students who receive the Pell Grant can apply it to their fees and still pay nothing, but Daigler said he does worry for students “just above the Pell line.” The program will also give students three years instead of four to complete their studies. And students must reside in Maine for at least a year before they’re eligible for tuition coverage. The program was originally designed to include out-of-state students in hopes of coaxing young talent to the aging state, where deaths now outpace births and retirements are leaving gaps in the workforce, Daigler said.
Still, he believes these modifications are a small price to pay for the state continuing to cover students’ tuition.
“That’s essentially how legislation is made,” Daigler said. “We’ve got to all sit at the table, roll up our shirtsleeves and try and make sure that we find the formula that meets everybody’s objectives.”
Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Portland Press Herald/Getty Images
Southern Maine Community College Thursday, November 4, 2021.
Students React
Student Jason Early, who’s graduating from York County Community College this spring and advocated for the program to state lawmakers, said he was similarly “disappointed” by students having to pay fees from now on. He hopes the Legislature might revisit that provision down the line.
But “if they have to make a compromise somewhere for [the program] to continue, well, it’s better than it ending completely,” said Early, who’s heading to the University of Southern Maine in the fall. “People who weren’t expecting that they’re going to be able to go to college are now able to. I feel like that’s such a great thing, just to have a more educated populace in Maine. I really think it’s great for everybody.”
Victoria Wile, a student at Central Maine Community College who also spoke out on behalf of the bill, said the program partly drove her decision to earn her building construction technology associate degree at the college—the same institution her grandmother, grandfather and mother have attended. She’s now working on the college’s maintenance team while she earns her second degree in facility maintenance and management.
The program “allowed me to focus on the schoolwork rather than trying to pay the bills” and put the money she saved toward other costs, including a study abroad experience and the tools she needed for her courses, she said. “I really didn’t want to go into college just to rack up debt.” Attending CMCC “became an easy decision, and it ended up being a very worthwhile decision.”
Wile said she’s glad to see Maine’s free college program continue so that her brothers and other Maine students can “get the same opportunity and financial freedom” she did.
“I hope other Mainers, other students who wouldn’t otherwise be able to attend college, really take advantage of the opportunity they have,” she said, “because I definitely wouldn’t be the same if I didn’t have the opportunity of free college.”
Broader Implications
Despite the trade-offs made to keep the program alive, Daigler sees the moment as a good omen for the free community college movement as a whole. Preserving the program during a time of intense political polarization and a lean budget year indicates how popular free college is as a policy, he said.
As fewer federal dollars flow to states, “everybody has to tighten their belt” and take cost-saving measures, Daigler said, but Maine lawmakers made “a very strong legislative commitment, driven by a very strong popular opinion that this program is necessary.” A fall 2025 poll found that 80 percent of Maine voters supported continuing the program. And enrollment has surged at the community colleges since the program began. More than 23,000 students eligible for the program have enrolled.
Morley Winograd, chairman of the board for the Campaign for Free College Tuition, agreed that Maine’s triumph is a win for the movement. He also believes the modifications made to the program were “reasonable” and don’t taint the victory.
More than 30 states now offer some form of tuition-free community college, and none of them have rescinded these programs, despite executive transitions in some of these states, “which is great evidence that they are an essential and important part of the overall U.S. higher education system and also a great benefit in this time of high, high concern over affordability,” he said.
In fact, Winograd expected states to propose cutting back on free community college programs amid heightened uncertainty around federal funding. But so far, that hasn’t happened.
“We have not seen such activity of any consequence,” he said, “which may be simply a lull before the storm, because a lot of state budgets are still operating on assumptions from last year … and a lot of them have midyear deadlines … but at this point, no, this has not been a big issue anywhere that we’re aware of.”
He also pointed out that Gov. Mills is running for Senate and has touted free community college as one of her landmark accomplishments.
“I think it further reflects the popularity of the program,” he said. “It’s a bipartisan idea.”
