Dive Brief:
- Undocumented students living in Arizona with deferred deportation status will qualify for in-state tuition at Arizona colleges, thanks to a ruling by a superior court judge.
- The Huffington Post reports the state’s Board of Regents was expected to meet this week to decide whether to adopt the same policy for its universities.
- A former attorney general sued one of the state’s community colleges for granting in-state tuition to students who qualified for Obama’s deferred action for childhood arrivals, or DACA, program because it went against state law, but the judge ruled federal law provides a right for these students to be here and trumps Arizona policy.
Dive Insight:
The difference between in-state and out-of-state tuition is often a make-or-break difference for undocumented youth who want to go to college. They are not eligible for federal financial aid and therefore need to fund their entire education on their own dime or with expensive private loans.
The law forbidding colleges from granting in-state tuition to undocumented students was approved by Arizona voters in 2006. Obama’s DACA program gave its first students relief from deportation and a legal right to remain in the United States in 2012. The Arizona lawsuit was filed the following year and could be appealed, but there's currently no word from the new attorney general’s office on whether that will happen, according to the Huffington Post.