The dust from debates about reauthorizing the Higher Education Act hasn’t yet settled, but already leaders of the groups representing community colleges and for-profit colleges have found another issue to disagree publicly over: whether to establish an independent public community college in the District of Columbia. The idea was recently been proposed as a way to help city residents out of poverty.

Harris N. Miller, president and chief executive officer of the Career College Association, kicked off the debate earlier this week with an op-ed article in The Washington Post. He said that “creating a taxpayer-funded community college in today’s economy is impractical and unproductive,” particularly when privately owned career colleges offered the city “cheaper and equally effective alternatives.”

That argument didn’t sit well with George R. Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges, who said in a statement on his association’s Web site that “some of the relevant facts were omitted or distorted” in Mr. Harris’s commentary.

“Cheaper for whom?” said Mr. Boggs in his rebuttal. “Career colleges often charge a student more than five times what a student attending a public two-year college pays, because the career college must ensure profits to its owners.” —Goldie Blumenstyk