New York became the first state to offer free college tuition to residents on Monday when governor Andrew Cuomo approved the 2018 State Budget [text, PDF]. The budget, unanimously passed [materials] by the Senate, invests $163 million in the Excelsior Scholarship [government website] program, making tuition free for middle class and low-income students attending 2 and 4-year SUNY and CUNY [official websites] colleges. Cuomo said he hopes other states will adopt similar programs.

By making college at our world-class public universities tuition-free, we have established a national model for access to higher education, and achieved another New York first.

Education funding has led to numerous legal challenges across the US. In September, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled that Governor Matt Bevin did not have the authority to unilaterally cut the budget for state universities. In 2015 the Supreme Court of Washington ordered [JURIST report] the state to pay a fine of $100,000 per day for each day that it fails to comply with a previous court ruling mandating adequate funding of public schools. In August 2015 the US Senate passed a bill [JURIST report] to revamp the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act. The US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled [JURIST report] in July of 2015 in favor of tight regulations pointed at the for-profit college industry. The court ruled that the Education Department has the right to demand that schools show that their graduates are financially dependent enough to repay their student loans. In August 2014 a judge for a Travis County Civil Court in Texas ruled [JURIST report] that the Texas legislature failed to meet its constitutional duty to provide for Texas public schools because the school finance system is structured, operated, and funded so that it cannot provide a constitutionally reasonable education for all Texas schoolchildren.