San Francisco has become the first city in the country to offer its residents a free community college education.
On Monday, Mayor Ed Lee and Supervisor Jane Kim announced that, beginning next fall, the City College of San Francisco will be open free of tuition to anyone — regardless of income — who has lived in the city for at least a year.
“Even the children of the founders of Facebook,” Kim noted.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, the deal was made possible through Proposition W, a measure city residents voted through last year that allows a transfer tax on properties that sell for more than $5 million.
Of the $44 million projected to be raised by Prop. W, $5.4 million has been committed to the college to cover two years. The allocation, the Chronicle reports, will need to be renewed after.
The deal will mean giving low-income, full-time students who already attend the college with waived fees $500 a year, and part-time students $200, for use on textbooks.
City College is San Francisco’s only community college. It faced a years-long battle over its accreditation and only saw it restored in 2015, lost, according to Inside Higher Ed, a third of its student body during that crisis.
Though it is yet unclear just how many the deal will benefit, college Chancellor Susan Lamb extended an invitation to students: “We have a lot of empty seats. … come back [to our college] and give us a try.”
