New Mexico Cancels Plan to Offer Free College to State Residents

The state of New Mexico recently canceled its plan to offer free college tuition to all state residents. The proposal, which was originally introduced in September 2019 by Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham(D), would have made college tuition-free for 55,000 students in the state.

According to a report by Campus Reform, the state of New Mexico has canceled its plans to offer free college tuition to residents of the state. The plan, which was originally announced in September 2019, would have made college tuition-free for the 55,000 students enrolled at state colleges and universities.

Recently, the state announced that the plan has been put on hold due to a decrease in state oil profits. The state plans to readdress the proposal during the 2021 legislative season.

The state originally announced the initiative in a press release that was published in September 2019.  “Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Wednesday announced the New Mexico Opportunity Scholarship, a new program that will, in conjunction with existing state and federal scholarship and grant infrastructure, provide for 100 percent of undergraduate tuition and fees at New Mexico institutions of higher education for eligible in-state resident students,” the governor’s office wrote in a statement in 2019.

Attorney Jorge Galicia, a Venezuelan living in New Mexico, told Campus Reform this week that his state’s “free college” program was likely to fail.

“The first thing we have to note about this whole plan is that it wasn´t even necessary for it to take into effect to notice why this is such a bad idea. Financing huge social programs with taxpayers’ money (or in this case, oil revenue money) might work for some time, but inevitably the state will run out of money at some point making it impossible to maintain the funding for these ambitious programs,” Galicia said.

“Imagine what would have happened if the program proposed had been actually enacted before the COVID crisis. What would have the State of New Mexico done to keep the promises made to the beneficiaries of the program?” Galicia finished.

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