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Northwestern Connecticut Community College in Winsted. Credit: Stephen Busemeyer / CT Mirror

No.

The Debt-Free Tuition funding is only available to full or part-time students enrolling in an upcoming semester and who began college in Fall 2020 or later.

The program designated as the “Mary Ann Handley Award” — formerly Pledge to Advance Connecticut or PACT — covers the gap between federal and state grants, and community college tuition and mandatory fees. 

To receive funding, students need to be Connecticut residents, fill out a FAFSA, attend community college part- or full-time, enroll in a degree or credit-bearing certificate program and be a state public or private high school graduate — GED and home schooled students qualify too.

The awards must apply to the first 72 credit hours earned by a student in a community college degree-granting or certificate program.

The goal of the program is to help students graduate debt-free, without student loans.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

CT Mirror partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.

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Mariana Navarrete Villegas is a Community Engagement Reporter for The Connecticut Mirror, covering Hartford. She recently graduated from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism with a master’s degree in Bilingual Journalism. Previously, she was the Community Engagement and Video Assistant at Epicenter-NYC and a Podcast Intern at The Take, Al Jazeera English’s daily news podcast. As a reporter, she has covered stories from New York to Florida, California, Panama, and Mexico, focusing on labor rights, immigration, and community care. She also hosts 'La Chismesita,' a community radio show in New York that archives oral histories through conversations with women community leaders. Originally from Mexico, Mariana spent her teenage years in Panama. She holds a B.A. in Global Studies with a minor in Psychology from Saint Leo University, where she interned at the International Rescue Committee.