With barely a whimper, free community college for all Americans bit the dust, at least for now.

Already stripped from the pared-down Build Back Better bill proposed by the Biden administration in October, free community college will not re-emerge as a free-standing bill in 2022.

An initiative that has been implemented successfully in 19 states as different as Arkansas and California, you might think that two years of free college might have been a model for elevating successful local initiatives as federal policy.

But apparently it was one thing for states to shoulder the burden of creating an educated workforce and another for the Biden administration to make that investment.

First Lady and community college professor Dr. Jill Biden was tasked with presenting the disappointing news to the 2022 Community College National Legislative Summit last week. She spoke of the human cost of this failure.

“These aren’t just bills or budgets to me, to you, right?” Biden told colleagues who had hoped for a $45.5 billion infusion of federal […]