Webinar: Free College Panel, Where Do We Go From Here?
September 29, 2026
Four national voices joined EqRC's Jalil Bishop, Director of Freedom Dreams, to ask a question too often answered for working people instead of with them: what would it take to make college free, and freeing, for everyone? Wisdom Cole (NAACP), Ashley Harrington (NAACP Legal Defense Fund), Braxton Brewington (Debt Collective) and Victoria Jackson (The Education Trust) covered how free college can work as national policy, lessons from a decade of state programs, and why free college is a working-class and blue-collar issue.
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The Case for Free College: Primer & Proposal
EqRC Policy Primer No. 01 · Jalil Bishop
Free college is already paid for. The U.S. spends $141 billion a year on higher education, and more than 60% goes to student loans, not grants. The Blue Collar Jobs & Community Transition Proposal redirects that money into a public guarantee: tuition-free public two- and four-year colleges, stipends for housing, food, books and transport, emergency grants, and a price cap so colleges can't raise the fare.
No new money. New logic.
EQUITY RESEARCH COOPERATIVE · FREE COLLEGE COALITION
Free College is a working-class, public good, democratic policy.
Higher education is a blue-collar issue. We are building the coalition to make college free, and freeing, for everyone: tuition, housing, food, books and the whole journey, paid for with money we already spend.
In partnership with the
About the Coalition
The Free College Coalition is a group of advocates, scholars, labor leaders and organizers convened by the Equity Research Cooperative to build the case for free college as a public good. Our monthly conversations shape EqRC's research and the Blue Collar Jobs & Community Transition Proposal.
We start from a simple fact. Most college students are not 18 and not at Harvard. They are working adults, parents and career changers at community and technical colleges, and half of all credentials earned in America are certificates and associate's degrees. Free College is not an elite policy. It's a Blue Collar policy.
Our strategy: fight big to win big. Public goods have always been won by coalitions broad enough to redraw the terms of the debate, linking college affordability to labor rights, racial justice, climate and a changing workforce.
Coalition members
American Association of University Professors (AAUP) · California Faculty Association · The Century Foundation · Debt Collective · Ed Trust · Higher Education Race and the Economy Lab (UC Merced) · NAACP Youth & College · Student Borrower Protection Center · Jain Family Institute · Economists and Legal Scholars for Free College · Higher Ed Labor United · and growing
11 partner organizations
41 states with free college programs
$400B in student debt cancelled
The free college movement is already here: labor unions, Black-led movement organizations, Tribal colleges, student organizers, civil rights coalitions and 41 states with programs of their own. There is a place in it for you.
Join the Movement
Join the Free College Coalition. Bring your idea, your organization or your energy. We convene monthly to build the case and the campaign.
hello@equityresearchcooperative.org →
Get involved in your state. Find out what college affordability looks like where you live, then connect with your elected officials and the advocates already doing this work on the ground.
Add your voice. Endorse, co-sponsor or cite the proposal, or request a briefing for your organization.
Join our Education Justice Community
We are advocates, (recovering) scholars, funders, donors, organizers, writers, journalists, parents, students, university employees, policy makers… anyone who believes in the promise of democracy & public good for everyone.
Letʻs keep the Public Promise
The primer exists because EqRC is independent. No agency assigned it, and no university commissioned it. Keeping research that free takes support that is free too: unrestricted gifts from people who believe the promise should stay public.
Monthly gifts to the Freedom Dream Fund keep EqRC's free college research independent and rooted in the communities it is about. Every gift, at any size, keeps the promise public.