Potentially down the road two years of community college could in sense be free to students. Looking into the future, Carl Sandburg College President Dr. Seamus Riley says they have some of that aspect already as they work to keep the cost of their college as low as possible for all their students:
“Our job is to try and make sure that the cost of college for our students is as low as possible and we do a fantastic job of that. We do it in a couple of ways. One is our tuition is a fraction of what it is at a four year private or even a four year public school. The second thing is we give fantastic counseling and advice to students because we really want to limit the amount of debt that students go into and so we are very, very good at making sure we have very, very low debt; one of the highest in the state. Also, we are very good at making sure students don’t get in over their head. We council them so that we can avoid debt, but if you do have debt, we make sure that is it manageable and as a result we one of the lowest default rates.”
Currently at Carl Sandburg College through the Galesburg and Sampson Promise, students in Knox and Warren Counties that graduate from high school or home school within the district boundaries are eligible to attend Sandburg tuition free.
