Has also resurrected legislation designed to allow community colleges to offer some four-year degrees
Most recent reports from Arizona’s legislature is that a bill is moving forward that will set aside $10 million for scholarships designed to assist struggling community college students. The Senate Education Committee on Tuesday agreed to the scholarship assistance without dissent. If approved in the House, it will provide aid to about 3,000 students.
As written, to be eligible, someone would have to qualify for a federal Pell Grant. These are available to anyone with family income less than $50,000 but are generally reserved for those below $20,000.
As to offering some four-year degrees, the House Education Committee, without dissent, resurrected legislation last week designed to allow community colleges to offer some four-year degrees. Reporter Howard Fischer, Capitol Media Services, reported that the newest version of the bill had cleared the House last month on a 57-3 vote. However, it had not gotten a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee where it is assigned.
According to Mr. Fischer, “[t]he new version seeks to get around that by taking the language and stripping it on to an unrelated measure on school expenditures that already had cleared the Senate. That means if the now-revised SB 1453 is approved by the full House — and there’s no reason to expect that won’t happen, given the prior vote — it then goes back to the full Senate for up-or-down review, bypassing the ability of any committee or chairman to kill it.”