Want higher education reform? You may be surprised where you’ll find it
As a top pupil in high school, Amy Miramontes-Franco knew she was destined for college.
But she surprised even herself when, for financial reasons and because she hadn't yet decided on a major, she began her higher education at a local customs college.
"In all honesty, I had this mentality where I had worked then hard, I didn't see myself going to a customs college because of my negative view of them," Miramontes said.
Having since graduated Long Beach City Higher, a California community college, with a iv.0 grade-bespeak average — at a fraction of the cost she would have paid to go to a four-twelvemonth university and with kinesthesia back up she said was much more personal — Miramontes volition enter UCLA this fall as a junior majoring in communications and economics.
Related: Customs colleges increasingly adding available's degrees
And she'southward changed her mind.
"Now that I've experienced a community college, my perception is completely different," she said. "They're very underestimated."
Long the Rodney Dangerfields of American higher didactics, customs colleges are suddenly getting some respect.
Not all community college students accept every bit good of an feel as Miramontes. Largely open up to anyone who applies, they continue to suffer low graduation rates, for example; just under 4 in ten customs-college students finish a degree within half-dozen years, according to the National Pupil Clearinghouse, which tracks this. And while community colleges concenter 45 percent of all of the nation's college-education enrollment, only xv per centum of high-income students choose them, the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia Academy reports.
So bad has the perception been of customs colleges that they themselves are dropping the "customs" from their names in many cases. Nevertheless they remain the butt of jokes on tardily-night talk shows and in other popular culture.
"If I wanted to acquire something," said the character Jeff Winger, played by Joel McHale, on the television sitcom Community, "I wouldn't have come to community college."
But at a fourth dimension when at that place's huge pressure for reform in higher education, many community colleges are proving more responsive than their iv-year counterparts.
Related: Gratuitous college idea picks upwards momentum
Community colleges in 21 states have added four-year bachelor's degree programs in high-demand fields, for case, and those in California will follow suit next year. They've connected closely with local businesses, and provide education so much more in tune with workforce needs that people who accept bachelor'south and fifty-fifty master's degrees return to community colleges for training that volition get them jobs. Among students who transfer from four-year public universities, more than than half now go in the opposite direction of Miramontes and switch to a community higher, the National Student Clearinghouse says.
1 reason for this may be that virtually thirty percent of graduates of community colleges make more money than their counterparts with bachelor'due south degrees, other research by the Georgetown Eye on Education and the Workforce shows. And while that advantage narrows by mid career, it'due south besides true that the community college graduates who do good from it pay much less on average for their educations—$3,264 per yr for tuition and fees, according to the College Board, compared to $8,893 per year at public and $30,094 per yr at private four-year colleges and universities.
Universities haven't paid much attention to their lower-level counterparts. "Now it'southward, 'Golly, what are they doing over there at that community college?" Debra Bragg, director, Office of Customs College Research and Leadership, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Their bachelors degrees, many students accept discovered, "didn't focus on them getting the job they need," said Michael McCall, president of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. "Whereas they tin go an allied health caste from united states of america and go out and brand $60,000 or $70,000 a year."
Related: Colleges endeavor to speed up pace at which students earn degrees
Community colleges in Tennessee will go completely tuition-complimentary next twelvemonth, and the same idea is under study in Oregon and being discussed in Indiana, and has been proposed in Texas. Only one in five community-college students has to accept out loans to pay for school and other expenses, and the average debt for those who do is is $ii,000 less than their counterparts at other types of universities and colleges, The Institute for College Access and Success calculates.
Individual foundations have been helping community colleges make themselves more desirable in other ways, too, by underwriting innovations such as programs that speed upwardly the time students take to get degrees, and the federal government has allocated billions to aid them train laid-off workers for new loftier-skill jobs and squad up with businesses to create apprenticeships.
But a significant portion of the activity at community colleges has non resulted from money coming in. It's been acquired by money running out, as states cutting back on spending for public higher education. Enrollment, too, has begun to slide; after jumping nearly 25 percent betwixt the 2007-2008 academic year and 2010-2011, the number of students in community colleges fell well-nigh 4 percent from 2012 to 2013 and some other nearly 3 percent since and then, the American Clan of Community Colleges reports.
Those realities, along with greater scrutiny and criticism of their performance, hateful community colleges have "had to exist innovative, had to be entrepreneurial, had to be very creative," said Walter Bumphus, president of the American Clan of Community Colleges.
Related: Community colleges join the fundraising game
"All of these things take come together all at in one case to forcefulness our customs colleges to modify," said Eloy Oakley, president and superintendent of the Long Beach Community College Commune in California, which includes Long Beach City College.
"We have all had to innovate to see the challenges of the economy and the challenges of state funding cuts. We've had to become more efficient, we've had to change the mode nosotros deliver education, and we've had to deal with the increased pressure not only to provide more access, but increment the number of degrees and certificates that we confer."
The community college turnaround has non gone entirely unnoticed, especially past public universities in some states. Those in Colorado and Michigan unsuccessfully opposed letting community colleges give bachelor'due south degrees. In California they blocked community colleges from offering iv-year degrees that are already available from nearby land universities. And public universities in Tennessee resisted making community college there tuition-complimentary.
"Nosotros had iv-year schools that were going, 'Wow, it's going to exist hard for us to compete with free,'" said Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who helped push the idea through anyway.
Related: Customs-college grads out-earn available's caste holders
Universities historically haven't paid much attention to their lower-level counterparts, said Debra Bragg, director of the Office of Customs College Research and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
"At present it's, 'Golly, what are they doing over at that place at that community college?"
Since President Barack Obama made customs colleges a centerpiece of a campaign to increase the proportion of Americans with degrees, "That rest of who's getting attending has shifted," Bragg said. "A lot of the higher completion agenda has been focused on the community colleges, because that's where policymakers have seen the near room for growth."
And, she said, the nigh room for improvement, given their poor graduation rates and other problems.
"'Nosotros're the underdog, only we can do information technology, nosotros can introduce. Nosotros're more nimble than the universities.' That's their culture and their image of themselves. Some people may look at that and say, 'Not and then much.'"
But the scrutiny seems to be having an effect.
"The leadership in community colleges has said, 'Hey, we're in the spotlight, we'd better start doing a footling amend task here and pay attention to memory and completion," Bragg said. "They had less selection. They had to start doing something different."
Or, as Oakley puts it, "Nevertheless we got here, it'due south a good matter."
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Source: https://hechingerreport.org/revenge-community-college/
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