In the aftermath of President Barack Obama’s announcement to make community college free, critics are assessing the quality and feasibility of the proposal, including the president of Oakton Community College in Skokie and Des Plaines.

Obama spotlighted Chicago while delivering the idea in his State of the Union, referring to Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s own plan to make scholarships available to Chicago Public School graduates.

“I want to spread that idea all across America, so that two years of college becomes as free and universal in America as high school is today,” Obama said in his State of the Union.

Margaret Lee, president of Oakton Community College, said community colleges have a unique role in providing invaluable degrees and specialized attention from faculty at a fraction of the cost — Oakton is priced at $6,000 for two years — compared with public and private four-year institutions. Oakton serves about 46,000 credit and non-credit students in Chicago’s north suburban area, including Evanston.

SESP Prof. James Rosenbaum, who has a research concentration in community colleges, said Obama was right that the labor market has an increased demand for skills and credentials that community colleges offer at a low cost. In many cases, employee shortages are not in jobs that require bachelor’s degrees but sub-baccalaureate degrees such as certificates and associate degrees, Rosenbaum said.

For the 2014-2015 school year, the average annual cost of tuition and fees at public two-year institutions in Illinois is $3,526, according to the College Board. Illinois trails 27 other states in affordability at two-year colleges on average.

However, Lee said she is doubtful that the initiative will pass in the Republican-dominated Congress but more optimistic that the public attention will increase recognition of the value of community colleges. In an interview on “60 Minutes,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) dismissed the idea as unaffordable.

Despite usual right-wing opposition to similar initiatives, the conservative business community should support the proposal because it would help fill their own job shortages, said Dan Allen, associate dean for development at Chicago Harris School of Public Policy and SESP instructor.

“There’s no reason Republicans couldn’t support it,” Allen said. “Whether they will there’s a reason to doubt.”

For Lee, affordability is no excuse for Congress not passing the proposal. The cost to the federal government, $60 billion over 10 years, would be a small fraction of the total education budget, Lee said.

But with 25 percent of the cost of the proposal shouldered by the state, Lee worries Illinois would be unable to deliver considering it already pays community colleges much less than what it’s supposed to, she said. At both a state and federal level, politicians tend to emphasize the importance of education but fail to deliver with funding, Lee said.

“Everything comes before it in the budget, not much comes before it in terms of the rhetoric,” Lee said. “I don’t think it’s going to go anywhere until the rhetoric and the reality of budgeting comes together.”

Obama’s proposal is relatively unprecedented, Allen said. Past attempts to make college more affordable have been made through financial aid and loan programs like the Federal Pell Grants starting in 1965, Allen said.

“I don’t think I would’ve gone this way, but I think it’s symbolic and really very important to say that we’re in a whole new ball game now, and everybody should have the right to go to college,” Rosenbaum said.

Obama shouldn’t stop at free tuition, Rosenbaum said. He should incorporate into the proposal additional support for community colleges through bolstering counseling resources, he said.

Allen suggests that to solve the complication of subsidizing the education of those who can already pay, the Obama administration should alter the program so that those with the means to pay for community college do so, giving a larger percentage of the funding to low-income families.

“If we begin by picking apart the proposal and questioning the economics of the proposal, then it doesn’t really have a chance,” Allen said. “I’d like to think that as a society we could begin the conversation by agreeing that providing more education, reducing the costs of education… is a good thing, and then we need to have a reasonable, evidence-based discussion about what the best way is to get there.”

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