Thousands of Delawareans are now able to attend Delaware Technical Community College for free thanks to legislation passed by Sen. Nicole Poore.
Senate Bill 12 expanded on the landmark Student Excellence Equal Degree program, better known as SEED, which has provided free college credits at Delaware Tech to more than 13,000 local high school graduates since 2005.
Known as SEED+, Sen. Poore’s legislation opened the scholarship program to adults and others previously excluded from SEED in an effort to help retool Delaware’s workforce obtain the skills they need for new careers in high-demand fields.
SEED+ is specifically designed to assist adult workers with little or no previous higher education experience. who were hit hardest by the pandemic. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate for people with a high school diploma or less jumped more than 12 percentage points from February to May 2020 – more than twice the job-loss rate experienced by people with a bachelor’s degree or more. Workers with a high school diploma and no college education also exited the labor force at three times the rate as those with a bachelor’s degree.
Some of Delaware Tech’s most successful programs are geared specifically toward good-paying, high-demand fields such as nursing, teaching, law enforcement, HVAC, renewable energy, diesel technology and entrepreneurship. With campuses in all three of Delaware’s counties, Delaware Tech also offers unparalleled convenience for our state’s working families and some of the highest graduation and employment rates in the state.
Delaware Tech estimated more than 300 Delaware workers could receive two semesters of free training and/or college credits for each $1 million invested in the proposed SEED+ program. Like the original SEED program, SEED+ is a last-dollar scholarship, meaning state funding is only used to fill the gaps between federal aid and the full cost of tuition.
