In a visit to Northern Maine Community College on Friday morning, Gov. Janet Mills touted her plan to make community college in Maine permanently free — a key part of the “affordability agenda” built into her supplemental budget proposal.
Mills toured the college’s building construction shop and held a roundtable with students across a spectrum of majors, from welding to nursing to business administration.
“We all know that education opens the doors to opportunity,” Mills said in an interview before the tour. “Community college helps us train people in health care, in the trades and teaching facilitation — all kinds of things — and gives people the skills that they need to raise a family and make a living here in Maine.”
The free community college program covers up to two years of tuition and fees for high school graduates, a value of around $3,800 annually.
The effort launched in 2022 to help students affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, and extended the following year for the 2024 and 2025 high school classes. Around half of Northern Maine Community College’s 600 students use the program, according to the college’s president, Doug Binsfeld. The remainder are non-traditional students who are not eligible.
Mills proposed making the program permanent in her State of the State address in January. A revised version came before the Legislature last week with changes designed to reduce the cost of the program by $2.5 million per year.
The permanent program, in its current form, would cover tuition but not fees (roughly $2,800), and be limited to students from Maine, who have lived here for at least a year prior to admission.
The revisions also pared down the extended time students have to complete degrees with scholarship support from four years for a two-year degree to three years.
“I think they’re very modest changes,” Binsfeld said. “I think it’s tightening it up so that it makes it something that’s feasible and is really forward looking when you think about the state and our economy.”
The program is estimated to cost $10 million annually.
Mills also visited the Career and Technical Education Center at Presque Isle High School on Friday to see $800,000 in infrastructure and equipment upgrades purchased with funds from the Maine Jobs and Recovery Plan.
She’s expected to join U.S. House candidate Jordan Wood, who is vying to fill the 2nd Congressional District seat, and gubernatorial candidate Nirav Shah at a campaign event in Fort Kent Friday evening ahead of the Can-Am Crown International Sled Dog Races this weekend.