The Results Are In: Oregon’s Free Community College Program Failed to Deliver

Headlines declared that Oregon high-school graduates would flock to the state’s community colleges after lawmakers in 2015 approved a program to make tuition essentially free.

The number of new high-school grads attending Oregon’s 17 community colleges could jump by a quarter, state officials assumed. State lawmakers behind the program patted themselves on the back for doing “probably the best thing we could offer young people today.”