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Given the low price of community college relative to need-based aid, last-dollar “free community college” (i.e., Promise) programs often only marginally reduce students’ real costs. Given this reality, some claim that these programs impact students largely through “messaging”: information conveying the affordability of community college. However, it is unclear how such messaging works in concept or practice. Drawing on a case study, I document the paradoxical ways last-dollar community college Promise programs alter students’ understanding of college affordability. Reflecting program marketing, students typically understood the program as simply “free college,” with little grasp of last-dollar structure or eligibility criteria. Many believed the Promise program paid their tuition, but administrative data showed the program funded very few students. Student misunderstanding of the program is traceable to a baseline conception of college as “expensive” and to a tenuous grasp of need-based aid. Promise programs’ “messaging effects” are predicated upon such prevalent misconceptions. The “message” is a mixture of clarification and misdirection, revealing a factual situation (that community college is often “tuition-free”) through an equivocation (that the Promise program is making it free).

This study found that the MATC Promise increased college attainment by encouraging Milwaukee high school students to access state and federal aid, and to consider matriculating to their local two-year college. The MATC Promise exemplifies the last-dollar model of college aid. If seniors at Milwaukee area public high schools complete academic milestones, apply for financial aid, qualify based on low family income, and matriculate to Milwaukee Area Technical College (MATC), then the Promise covers any remaining tuition charges. The message promoting free college was the program's main element, since the funding support for eligible students came primarily from existing state and federal aid. We studied outcomes for the first four graduating classes after the Promise was launched, compared to the trend in Milwaukee for the previous six graduating classes. The rate of matriculation to MATC increased from 10 percent to 15 percent. There was no such increase in matriculation to other technical college districts around the state, suggesting that the increase was caused by the Promise. The increase in enrollment was larger among lower-income students and those in the urban Milwaukee Public Schools. Those students were more likely to apply for financial aid earlier, regardless of whether they ultimately qualified for the Promise, and their rate of matriculation to any college increased from 45 percent to 49 percent. There was no indication that attracting additional students to college led to lower graduation rates, though we were limited to examining credentials earned in two years or less.

Empirical educational research nearly universally tacitly assumes that people attend college only in order to improve their likely earnings. Thus, it ignores the immense cultural importance ascribed to education (and particularly higher education) in modern culture, or at least proceeds as if this cultural valorization is irrelevant to individuals' educational decision-making. I first review how an economistic model of action informs all dominant theories of educational decision-making, and then suggest how institutional theory can provide a richer account of the college transition. Drawing on in-depth interviews with first-time, first-year community college students, I illustrate this approach through a 'thick description' of individuals' emerging educational orientations. I find that attending college reflects both instrumental goals and moralized conceptions of educational attainment. The decision to attend community college was informed by conceptions of college costs, a limited understanding of grant aid, and loan aversion. And I identify three educational dispositions among entering community college students which map onto institutionalized organizational pathways through the community college itself.