Tens of thousands of people have applied for or expressed interest in New York's free public college tuition program since it was announced earlier this year. And now that the academic year has started and those who qualified for the Excelsior Scholarship have begun classes, some colleges and universities are beginning to see the early effects of the program.
But those impacts may depend on how much one requirement of the program -- attending full-time -- plays out at different institutions. Even though part-time enrollments predominate at many two-year institutions across the country, the opposite is true in New York State. In the City University of New York system, more than 58,000 students attended full-time last year compared to more than 26,000 part-time degree-seeking students. At the State University of New York’s 64 campuses, 54 percent of students attended full-time last year compared to 46 percent of students who attended part-time.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/10/13/impact-new-yorks-free-tuition-program-two-community-colleges