NPR

A Degree With Zero Student Debt. Does It Work?

The four-year results are in on Tennessee's free college initiative. Is this new data significant enough to sway the future of these free college programs?
Source: Hanna Barczyk for NPR

Justin Napier is exactly the kind of community college graduate Tennessee was hoping for.

In high school, Napier didn't have his eye on college. In fact, he had a job lined up working on race cars after graduation. But in the spring of 2014, a year before Napier graduated, Gov. Bill Haslam announced a plan to make community college free for graduating high school seniors, part of a broader plan to dramatically increase the number of adults in Tennessee with college credentials.

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