Research finds that over the years, as more students have entered colleges of all kinds, the student bodies at elite four-year colleges have grown wealthier, while those at public two-year colleges have grown poorer. Although stories in the Washington Post and Inside Higher Ed have highlighted an influx of upper-middle class students to community colleges, the study on which these stories are based actually found that low-income students are flowing into two-year institutions at a much faster pace than upper-middle class students.
The growing economic and racial divide between two and four-year colleges is of concern to many, including members of the Century Foundation Task Force on Preventing Community Colleges From Becoming Separate and Unequal. The Task Force, which held its first meeting last month, is co-chaired by Anthony Marx, president of the New York Public Library, and Eduardo Padron, president of Miami Dade College, and is funded by the Ford Foundation. U.S. Under Secretary of Education Martha Kanter spoke as a special guest at the first meeting of the task force. Following the meeting, Kanter, Padron, and I discussed why growing stratification between two- and four-year institutions is of concern. Below is a short film of the dialogue:
In the video, Padron notes that growing economic and racial segregation in higher education is troubling in part because “the have-nots, history has taught us, have no political power, and with no political power, you get less resources.” Kanter, likewise, suggested that all sectors of higher education should seek “to reflect America” and urged steps to better connect the separate silos in higher education.
But Jennifer Wheary, a senior fellow at Demos, raises a thoughtful question about efforts to draw a broader cross-section of students into two-year institutions. “If community colleges experience an influx of middle-income students,” she asks, “will low-income students be displaced?” Community colleges, as open-access institutions, have a special role in educating disadvantaged students, so Wheary’s question is an important one.
It seems to me that if community colleges do succeed in drawing greater numbers of more affluent students, there are a couple of possible ways to avoid a zero-sum game so that no one would be displaced and everyone, particularly low-income students, would benefit.
For one thing, any strategy to attract more middle-class students into the two-year sector (through honors programs or offering B.A’s at two-year institutions, for example) needs to be coupled with aggressive effort to provide more low-income and working-class students the chance to attend four-year colleges. Just as the adoption of elementary and secondary urban magnet school programs to draw middle-class students are often accompanied by comparable efforts to give low-income urban students a chance to attend middle-class suburban schools, so spaces can be opened up on community-college campuses by efforts of four-year institutions to more aggressively recruit talented low-income and working-class students.
For another, because a greater presence of middle-class and upper-middle class students in the two-year sector is likely to strengthen the political capital of community colleges, two-year institutions should be in a better position to demand stronger funding. More generous resources, in turn, should allow for the kind of community college expansion that would avoid squeezing out students of any background.
If properly handled, then, by educating students from all economic backgrounds, community colleges can do an even better job of educating low-income and working-class students and avoid a zero-sum game that pits different economic groups against one another.