Top Obama Aide Says More Support for Community Colleges Is Planned

Washington — Community colleges and the job-training programs they provide are already among the big winners under President Obama’s higher-education and economic-recovery policies. Now word comes from the White House that they may benefit again, reports The Swamp, a blog operated by the Washington bureau of the Chicago Tribune.

Rahm Emanuel, the president’s chief of staff, told the Democratic Leadership Council today that Mr. Obama would soon announce plans for a sizable increase in federal support for job-training programs at community colleges. “In the next couple of weeks, you will see a major announcement by the president on community colleges and job training,” Mr. Emanuel was quoted as saying.

He stressed the importance of community colleges in meeting worker-training and economic-recovery goals, and said they would be getting “major resources to compete.”

That prediction is the latest among many signs of the growing recognition within the Obama administration of the importance of two-year institutions. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, who chose a community college as the site of his first official visit to an institution of higher education, announced a new grant program for community colleges this month. In April, Mr. Obama chose a community-college leader, Martha J. Kanter, as under secretary of education, the department’s second-highest post. —Charles Huckabee