Proposal would expand free college program

• The Delaware Tech Student Excellence Equals Degree scholarship program was started in 2005.
• It provides financial assistance to high school students who have good grades for going to community college.

For the last decade, any Delaware high school student with a grade of C-plus or higher has been able to go to community college for free. Now Gov. Jack Markell wants to make that scholarship program a little less rigid and broaden the offer to include people who aren't coming right out of high school.

He and state Sen. Harris McDowell, D-Wilmington North, the driving force behind the Student Excellence Equals Degree scholarship, were joined by officials and students at Delaware Technical Community College's Dover campus on Tuesday to push for expanding the program, which Markell had called for in his State of the State address earlier this year.

Students in the program can go to any of DelTech's four campuse or the University of Delaware's Associate in Arts program.

State of the State: Markell calls for continued change

"This is part of the secret sauce" to put people to work in Delaware, Markell said of the program. He touted the state's relatively low unemployment number – 4.6 percent, compared to the national figure of 5 percent – and said, "the work of Delaware Tech is critical to that success."

Part of the idea behind opening up the SEED program to more people is that it will widen the avenue to better jobs for those who have already been working for a while.

The bill, which is sponsored by McDowell and Rep. Debra Heffernan, D-Bellefonte, would allow for people who aren't coming directly from high school to have access to the scholarship and it would allow for students who are on it to take a part-time course load or take a semester off.

Now, students have to go to school full-time and they aren't able to take a semester off without special permission.

Zach Todd, 21, who is in the Visual Communications Department at Del Tech, has been holding down a job at a Dover restaurant and going to school full time. Most weeks, he ends up getting just one day off.

"It could have been helpful," he said, explaining that if the rules for the SEED scholarship had been more lenient, he could have gone to school part-time some semesters.

Todd is almost finished at Del Tech and is planning to finish his bachelor's degree at Wilmington University in its program for video game design.

He was among the roughly 50 students who came to hear the governor pitch his plan, as was Vanessa Castillanc, 21, in the Visual Communications Department.

After two years of balancing school and work, Castillanc, too, would have taken some semesters as a part-time student, she said.

Delaware was one of the first states to offer free community college education – the SEED program started in 2005 – which put it ahead of the national curve. President Barack Obama began calling for open access to community college in the early years of his administration.

The proposed expansion to Delaware's program would cost about $1 million a year, McDowell said.

Asked about the Republican push to have the SEED scholarships cover job-training programs as well as Del Tech tuition, McDowell said, "we have a successful program – let's not put pieces in it that don't belong."

He supports the idea of job-training programs, he said, but would keep them separate from the SEED scholarships.

Contact Saranac Hale Spencer at (302) 324-2909, sspencer@delawareonline.com or on Twitter @SSpencerTNJ.

Student Excellence Equals Degree scholarship

• Established in 2005
• Provides financial assistance to Delaware Technical Community College or UD's Associate in Arts program
• Covers tuition costs, but not fees and books 
• Student must maintain a cumulative grade point average of at least 2.5 calculated on a 4.0 scale
• Availability being expanded to part-time students