And shortly after its approval, Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) announced that he plans to expand the bill to deal more broadly with what he called a “college affordability crisis.”
The Senate Higher Education Committee voted 5-0 to approve the measure (S2965), which would create a commission to study whether to enact a pilot program on what’s called “Pay Forward, Pay Back.” Under the program, students at the state's public colleges and universities would not pay tuition while attending school in exchange for a percentage of their future incomes for a set number of years.