The Los Rios Promise Program allows students to attend their first two years of community college without having to pay tuition or enrollment fees. This process is made out to be easy, but incoming students are actually hit with many complications upon applying for the program.
The criteria for the Promise Program is simple: As long as you’re enrolled in 12 to 15 units, are a California resident and have completed both your FAFSA and application for enrollment, you get your tuition and enrollment fees covered.
As I made the last-minute decision to go to American River College instead of a university, I quickly found out that getting my two years at ARC free wasn’t going to be all that easy. Although the Promise Program provides great financial help to students, community colleges like ARC should make it far easier to navigate.
I applied for the Promise Program and was almost immediately denied because of my household income. Throughout high school, I was always told that you got your first two years of community college free and was never told anything about having to have a certain household income.
I ended up calling ARC directly to try and figure this out and was told that the reason I couldn’t qualify for the program was because I had been in college previously. This was absolutely not true. I took one college-level course in high school, but that was the extent of my college experience.
After telling the school that I hadn’t attended college previously, they said they would go ahead and put me through the program and eventually give me the refund for the enrollment fees and tuition I had to pay so that I wouldn’t be dropped from my classes.
The first two weeks of school went by, and I received no word on the status of my Promise Program eligibility or me getting my money back.
Finally, after those two weeks, I checked my eServices and saw that I had a negative balance in what I owed in my financial account. I went ahead and filled out my refund request, and it took another two and a half weeks for the request to finally go through.
In the end, I got my tuition and enrollment fees waived like I was supposed to, but it took a month of trying to navigate the whole situation. Peers of mine who go to other schools outside of the Los Rios Community College District have had the same exact issues as well.
The process should be simple. You should apply for your community college that you want to go to, and not have to pay any enrollment fees or tuition in the first place. You shouldn’t have to pay and then wait to get your money back.
It’s a process that is made out to be seamless by the teachers and administrators of high schools, but for some, it ends up being way more difficult than it needs to be.
The way to fix this is simple. If you are in your first two years of community college, there should be no tuition or enrollment fees to begin with.
