Community Colleges and the State of the Union

January 25, 2012, 4:28 pm

In this year’s State of the Union address, President Obama called the inability of many hard-working Americans to enjoy the American Dream “the defining issue of our time.” We shouldn’t “settle for a country where a shrinking number of people do really well while a growing number of Americans barely get by,” he said, and called for restoring “an economy where everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share, and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

In the speech, Obama emphasized the role of education, and community colleges in particular, in restoring equal opportunity for individuals of all backgrounds. A coveted seat next to First Lady Michelle Obama was reserved for Jackie Bray, a single mother from North Carolina who attended Central Piedmont Community College in order to get the skills necessary to work at a Siemens gas-turbine factory. Obama pledged to “give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers.”

As open-access institutions with lower tuition levels than four-year universities, community colleges are at the heart of the president’s larger goals of restoring social mobility and making the U.S. the most educated country in the world. But at the very moment that community colleges are being asked to do more, they are the subject of budget cuts and are facing demographic changes that make their job more difficult.

Research finds that the economic and racial divide between two- and four-year colleges is growing, with upper-middle-class students less likely to use community colleges than in the past. This change, in turn, may be weakening the political and social capital of two-year institutions, which historically have educated a broad cross-section of students.

To address this issue, The Century Foundation, where I work, is assembling a blue-ribbon Task Force on Preventing Community Colleges from Becoming Separate and Unequal. The group, which is supported with funding from the Ford Foundation, will be chaired by Anthony Marx, president of the New York Public Library, and Eduardo Padron, president of Miami Dade College. Marx was until recently president of Amherst College, where he championed social mobility and pursued an important program to ensure that bright low-income community college students could transfer to one of the most selective four-year colleges in the country. Padron heads the nation’s largest institution of higher education, serving more than 174,000 students. Miami Dade, a two-year college which also offers bachelor’s degrees in certain disciplines, was recently named a top finalist for the prestigious Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. The Century Foundation task force will examine the demographic challenges facing community colleges and what can be done to best address them.

President Obama was right to highlight the importance of community colleges and to single out Jackie Bray as a community college success story. If our society is serious about wanting to make sure that everyone has a “fair shot” at the American Dream, strengthening community colleges must be at the core of our efforts.

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missoularedhead

Please make sure your Blue Ribbon Commission looks at the role of mental illness in cc’s. The number of students with mental illness (controlled well or not by medication) has increased greatly in the past several years, and that, too, has an impact on community colleges and their ability to be effective.
missoularedhead

Please make sure your Blue Ribbon Commission looks at the role of mental illness in cc’s. The number of students with mental illness (controlled well or not by medication) has increased greatly in the past several years, and that, too, has an impact on community colleges and their ability to be effective.
bewoodall

[citation needed] Also, huh?
bewoodall

[citation needed] Also, huh?
salchaktoka

“If our society is serious about wanting to make sure that everyone has a “fair shot” at the American Dream, strengthening community colleges must be at the core of our efforts.”

It wasn’t all that long ago that four-year colleges were supposed to be at the “core of our efforts” to give everyone that “fair shot.” I suppose that after a few more years of Republican and Wannabe-Republican rule, we’ll have lowered our aspirations to completion of the sixth grade.
betterschool

Our nation’s community colleges are a great asset but they cannot possibly achieve what the President has in mind for them unless we find ways to accelerate structural reform.
Mark_MIllen

Community colleges exist and the (recent) focus by this administration to highlight excellence at public community colleges, and the Aspen Award, is commendable. Where were community colleges when employer needs were unmet in the past two decades? More agile, flexible, and mission-oriented schools (i.e. community-based career colleges) were able to research, develop and deploy career-oriented programs that provide basic skills and technical skills to achieve gainful employment (in a timely manner). All the things that are wrong with community colleges are the hallmarks of successful career colleges. Any negative press or unethical behavior by individuals at career colleges can be countered by embarrassing, antiquated, or inefficient anecdotes seen at your local public community college. When President Obama pledged to “give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers.” What I heard is that the challenge for each community is to find a solution that works – most states are strapped for funds and throwing cash at public community colleges won’t guarantee any results. It is my hope that wise leaders in our community will use and partner with private career colleges to ensure each community builds a career center that engages the best of the best and uses these education providers who are used to being measured by delivering results and developing partnerships with private industry.
Mark_MIllen

Community colleges exist and the (recent) focus by this administration to highlight excellence at public community colleges, and the Aspen Award, is commendable. Where were community colleges when employer needs were unmet in the past two decades? More agile, flexible, and mission-oriented schools (i.e. community-based career colleges) were able to research, develop and deploy career-oriented programs that provide basic skills and technical skills to achieve gainful employment (in a timely manner). All the things that are wrong with community colleges are the hallmarks of successful career colleges. Any negative press or unethical behavior by individuals at career colleges can be countered by embarrassing, antiquated, or inefficient anecdotes seen at your local public community college. When President Obama pledged to “give more community colleges the resources they need to become community career centers.” What I heard is that the challenge for each community is to find a solution that works – most states are strapped for funds and throwing cash at public community colleges won’t guarantee any results. It is my hope that wise leaders in our community will use and partner with private career colleges to ensure each community builds a career center that engages the best of the best and uses these education providers who are used to being measured by delivering results and developing partnerships with private industry.
robjenkins

I would like to see a blue-ribbon Task Force on Preventing Community Colleges from Becoming Merely Career Training Centers. Two-year institutions are also liberal arts colleges, where many of this nation’s young (and not-so-young) people go to begin their journey to a bachelor’s degree or beyond.

I too am grateful for all the attention that the President and others have brought to community colleges. But I fear that, in overemphasizing career training, we ignore the importance of the liberal arts curriculum for all students, whether planning to transfer or headed right into the workforce, and risk relegating community college students to permanent second-class status because they lack any semblance of the more balanced and broad-based education that their counterparts receive at four-year schools.
http://twitter.com/DwayneHouston2 Dwayne Houston

I’m sorry but I think the emphasis for a liberal arts education should NOT be a priority at community college. Most students that attend community college just want to get their degree, so they can go on and get their jobs. Do we really need a welder who is well-versed in Shakespeare or a licensed truck driver who can quote Satre?

Every associates degree, just like a Bachelor’s, has a certain number of liberal art credits required. I’m not denying the importance of a liberal arts background, but I believe it should be kept to a minimum. Again, these are classes the students don’t want and aren’t immediately applicable to their goals. Yes, we want a more educated populace, but we run the risk of turning people off to completing their degrees by adding more liberal arts requirements.
11291104

Actuallly, Dave, I don’t think most people at CCS want only to get job training for a career. Plenty take CC classes to prepare for transfer, and some students are reverse transfer students trying to get liberal arts or technical education classes. Community colleges have three missions critical to President Obama’s goals: transfer education, career and technical education, and remediation (within some limits of reason and funding). Furthermore, good career and technical education includes exposure to the the liberal arts — a hallmark of American higher education and its efforts to produce an educated and capable citizenry.
Prof_truthteller

YES, we DO.Maybe not Shakespeare or Sartre, but we do want as workers, as citizens and thus voters and taxpayers, people who can think clearly and logically, write and speak clearly and logically, and understand others who write and speak to them clearly and logically. We want workers and citizens who can accurately calculate a bill and make payments and figure out their taxes. We want workers and citizens who have at least a basic understanding of how government operates, how society functions, and are aware of the wider world that is full of a diversity of views that often differ from one’s own. We want everyone to have a basic knowledge of history, both of our country and of the world. Strictly limiting CCs only to job training implies we just want wage slaves.
tuliptree

So, is the question how to get more upper-middle class studentst to enroll in CC’s? That would be a good goal, beneficial to students and to the CC’s, but the downside would be whether they would take up spaces formerly available to lower-income students.
http://twitter.com/DwayneHouston2 Dwayne Houston

“People who can think clearly and logically, write and speak clearly and logically, and understand others who write and speak to them clearly and logically… calculate a bill and make a payments and figure out their taxes… basic understanding of how the government operates…”

Are these not all things that someone SHOULD possess upon graduating high school? We should take another look at why high school graduates can’t do these things and make more of an effort to fix it.

You could argue by putting the emphasis at the community college level, a person has to pay for it; if their money is on the line, there is higher motivation to get something out of their education. Or that we’re creating a safety net for those that the high schools couldn’t help. But there are far too many who won’t attend community college or university. If we really want ALL of our citizens to possess these traits, then their emphasis should be at the secondary school level, which ALL of them are required to attend.

Thank you for replying.
http://twitter.com/DwayneHouston2 Dwayne Houston

I agree with you. I’m not saying that CCS should exclude liberal arts courses altogether. I just personally would prefer a greater emphasis on the latter two. But, I can’t argue that transfer education is equally important with the others. Thank you for your replying.
nmann23

I agree. As a community college academic advisor, I see students with all types of goals, ranging from getting the piece of paper they need to advance/keep their jobs to a math and science loaded general studies AS degree as the first step toward becoming a doctor-and some students who just know they want to do something with their lives and this is where their friends got started. Having a core belief system that supports achievement is a top goal, whatever achievement looks like for that particular student. It’s also so important in my view that we have adequate resources for general education. Even if we can’t keep a student past the first semester or two, making sure they are competent in writing and basic math enriches their lives beyond what they usually had before. The longer we can keep them in school, the more organic the understanding becomes for students that learning for its own sake is of value. We can’t be ‘everything’ to everyone, but I believe (perhaps too optimistically, but that’s fine by me) that we can be ‘something’ to everyone.