National Assault on Community Colleges

A thought-provoking new report just out from the Center on the Future of Higher Education documents and laments the assault on community colleges underway across the country.

Bucking historic trends in rising college enrollments, there's been a startling stagnation or even a downturn in enrollment in community colleges, not because demand has declined but because there is insufficient capacity.  In some places and in some programs, thanks to substantial and sustained budget cuts, the community colleges are literally tapped out.

That's right-- students are showing up at "open door" colleges and being effectively turned away.  Welcome to the "new normal."

If you believe that the purpose of public postsecondary education is to provide opportunities to the most advantaged, this is insane. Clearly, the current model for public higher education is broken, and as the report argues, it's time for a "reboot." If you believe that college endows social goods, which entire communities benefit from, then you will support greater public investment in community colleges to reverse this trend. If you believe in equity, and actually understand how people with fewer resources make decisions, rather than assuming they are econometricians, then you'll demand change now.

If on the other hand, if you think that college is merely a private investment that accrues to individual people and you think that markets actually solve more problems than they create, and if you believe education is an economic good comparable to any other product then you probably think public higher education is in exactly the position it deserves.  The market must be working.  Sure, demand is outstripping supply, but thank goodness the private sector is here to help!  We can simply raise tuition at community colleges to fund them, and in the meantime pave the road for private institutions where the public has no say over governance or spending, or for that matter quality. (No, sorry, accreditation isn't going to ensure quality, and just as consumers demonstrate time and again, neither are the students.)  All that matters is that we provide the mirage of opportunity to satisfy our own appetite for the meritocracy narrative, right? And heck, maybe this will finally provide a way of telling everyone outside of the elite classes that they shouldn't be going to college anyway!


Read the report. Either this is a crisis we have to resolve, or we are denying the existence of a crisis because the assault on community colleges is an intentional one designed to promote the growth of private and for-profit institutions.  "Stealth privatization" of higher education, as Richard Vedder called it at a conference my department hosted last week, is no longer so stealth at all.  The Campaign for the Future of Higher Education-- and students nationwide-- want to know, isn't it time to DO something about it?

Community Colleges and Press

To the editor of Education Week:

In the June 9 article by Caralee Adams titled "Popularity Offers Challenges for Community Colleges." I am quoted in a manner that implies significant disrespect for the work of community colleges. While Ms. Adams used my words verbatim, they were taken out of context and this --unintentionally--altered their meaning.

I shared in the effort to craft and pass the American Graduation Initiative intended to support the efforts of community colleges to serve students from all walks of life. When the AGI failed to become law, it meant that community colleges had been drawn into the public eye but not given the financial resources they needed to improve their outcomes. Their current outcomes became highly visible, and left some with the false impression they were attributable to a lack of will on the part of the colleges, rather than a lack of resources.

I explained this to Caralee, and in particular I said the colleges had both the "will and commitment" to succeed. I also noted that I felt partially responsible for not delivering more support to them. Those pieces were paraphrased due to space constraints, but they were essential.

My long track record of analyzing and explaining the challenges facing community colleges stands on its own. They have motivation--what they need now is money and technical assistance. I fully support efforts to deliver on the promise of the AGI.

Sara Goldrick-Rab