Roxbury Community College has one of largest graduating classes in history. School credits free tuition program.

Last year, Massachusetts began offering free tuition at community colleges and now Roxbury Community College is seeing the payout. At roughly 300 graduates, the 2026 class is one of the largest in the school's history.  Their highly decorated student graduation speaker returned to get her degree after 20 years, because it was free.

"If tuition wasn't free, I probably would not have done this. I actually came back to a bill from my previous experience here. With that hanging over my head, and without free tuition, I would not have done it," said Quiana Wilson, one of the top graduates in this year's class and the graduation speaker.

"Free community college has helped us. Our enrollment over the last two years has grown by 30%," said RCC President Jonathan Jefferson. "The average number of credits students are taking has gone up 10%. Students are going to classes more often, so we are getting more graduates."

RCC has transfer programs with numerous area colleges from Northeastern to UMass Boston. A large portion of the graduating class are moving onto four-year schools to finish their degrees.

"I would encourage anyone thinking about, 'What do you want to study?'  to explore different areas.  Why not come to community college? It's free tuition for two years, giving you the opportunity to experiment, and pick up certificates along the way," said Jefferson.

Wilson went to RCC after high school but ended up leaving, saying life priorities changed. After years in corporate sales, Wilson entered a networking meeting and quickly felt small and out of place without a degree.

"My imposter syndrome took hold again. I had to make a change," said Wilson. "Literally, the next day I walked into RCC registration and signed up."

She is now highly decorated from her time at RCC and has become draped in awards from the Phi Theta Kappa Honors Society. Wilson is on the All-USA Academic team and was selected by the Coca-Cola Foundation as their New Century Transfer Pathway Scholar. Only one student is picked from each state.

"If you live long enough in one version of yourself, you can believe that's all that there is," Wilson told the crowd of graduates during her speech.

Now she is going onto Northeastern to study digital communication and media with the goal of enrolling at Harvard in the future.