Many students receive federal or state grants; nationwide, 36 percent of undergraduate students received some amount in Pell Grants in the 2014-15 school year, according to the College Board. It’s not just community college students who won’t benefit, according to Matthew Chingos, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute think tank who wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post when Cuomo first introduced the plan in January. That means they would cover all of qualifying students’ tuition and allow young people to apply other grants to non-tuition costs. College tuition ― for all types of schools, including public and private ― increased 12-fold between 1978 and 2012, while wages stagnated. “We should make college affordable, college should be accessible, college should be free for middle-class families in this nation,” Cuomo said at Wednesday’s signing.

Source: Huffington Post April 13, 2017 09:45 UTC