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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

The 2-Year College Experience

Oh, you won’t need all that . . .


With all the talk about the affordability of attending college, and the recent initiatives by some of America’s best-endowed universities to enhance their accessibility to people from all walks of life, including those who fall between the poles of rich and poor socio-economically, a random piece of data caught my eye the other day.

It revealed that New Mexico’s public four-year colleges, on average, had some of the lowest tuitions in the nation, coming in at under $4,000 a year. Going beyond New Mexico, the article reported that tuitions at two-year colleges nationwide (which educate about one-half of all American college students) were about $2,361. Taking into account aid, their average net cost is only $320 dollars per year. That’s right, $320!

Obviously, Harvard and Yale aren’t for everybody, even with their newly accommodating financial aid schemes, nor are community colleges. And everyone isn’t going to go to school in New Mexico. Still, you have to admit that at $320 there is more headline news about an educational bargain than is conventionally brought to our attention. And, the community-college tuition in California, a state serving many more students than NM, is modest as well.

Looking at the Web site of the American Association of Community Colleges is illuminating. There are almost 1,200 community colleges across the country, which leads me to believe that there must be one within commuting distance of almost every person in the nation. And they serve in excess of 11 million students (full- and part-time). I have always believed that community colleges were the most authentically American form of higher education. They are to post-secondary education what jazz is to music.

It is not surprising, therefore, that at least two of the presidential candidates have proposed a tuition-tax credit for the first several thousand dollars spent by a family on college tuition: Barack Obama is offering a $4,000 tuition tax credit; and Hillary Clinton is proposing a $3,500 credit plus an increase in Pell Grants. These very similar plans would effectively make community colleges available to Americans no matter how modest their means.

The community-college movement in the United States has been one of the most creative, productive and generally successful education initiatives anywhere on the planet. They have succeeded in providing the types of academic and vocational experiences urgently needed by our economy. Concurrently, they have opened the doors of higher education to countless Americans, who less than 50 years ago would have regarded college attendance as hopelessly beyond them.

Our nation’s community colleges define our democratic ideals, even as they serve our pressing social mandates. While our front-page newspaper stories are often reserved for the Ivy League, the Big 10, and George Washington University, community colleges have typically worked in a quiet and steady manner to fulfill the expectations with which they were launched. They are responsive to input from local, regional, and national employers and have become student-friendly role models in their way for four-year colleges and even research universities, who have all too often graduated students insufficiently prepared for what follows commencement, students who have then stumbled through periods of unemployment or underemployment. There are those with BA degrees who enroll at community colleges to learn a vocation that will permit them to earn a living.

Despite the successes of community colleges, legislators and governors have not fully acknowledged the service and the opportunity they present. Senator Obama’s and Senator Clinton’s proposals are therefore particularly welcome. Two-year institutions have the capacity to inform the head, the heart, and the hand. They provide students with careers, but they can also serve as a bridge into the junior year of baccalaureate programs through articulation agreements and transfer programs as well as institutional partnerships with upper-division programs.

In the coming decade, as more and more baby-boomers leave the ranks of the employed on their way to retirement, the need for skilled personnel will be a serious constraint on the national economy. If the Congress is looking for initiatives to invite to the attention of America’s university community — encouraging them to open their doors more widely to community-college alumni — providing special financial encouragement to the universities and targeted support to the students would be a sound investment. Universities, after all, are tropistic; just as plants grow toward the sun and their roots reach for water, universities lean in the direction of money and status.

Many of the students in community colleges aren’t typical 18-year olds, just out of high school. Frequently, they are older students whose life experiences as well as the disciplines mastered on the job or in military service have provided them with much to write about when they take English 101. Conventionally community colleges have been commuter institutions. The time has come to add residences to their agenda. Housing for students would enhance their attractiveness and help to fully articulate their function.

Graduates of two-year institutions generally have successful academic transitions to 4-year institutions. Indeed, many do better than their peers who arrived on campus as freshmen, directly out of secondary schoo. As our nation wrestles with our competitors in the global economy, as we struggle to define a more sharply articulated national economic politic, as we anticipate a presidential election and a new administration, more robust support for our community colleges makes good sense. They are among our lesser-appreciated and most important academic resources. We need to celebrate them and accord them the status they have earned.

Photo from Flickr user AMagill

Posted at 09:31:27 PM on January 22, 2008 | All postings by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg

Comments

  1. As a high school teacher I wear many hats. One of those hats is guidance counselor. Many of my students need advice on college. I try to encourage some of them who I do not think are particularly ready for a four year program to attend community college. This advice is met with resistance because they feel by going to a community college thay have failed to reach some educational ideal. I have been successful in persuading some students to go to our local community college and those students tell me it was the best experience of their young lives. I agree with you on the role community colleges play in our community and I hope their status is elevated in our society.

    — cliff · Jan 23, 08:29 AM · #

  2. I teach at a community college and am amazed that so many folks look down on us. Most of my colleagues have PhDs and could have taught anywhere. They CHOSE the community college because they want to teach. I believe there is no better place for students — and not just those who need developmental assistance, but all students! We have arrangements with 4yr schools in our area so our best students very often get scholarships so their last 2 years are affordable as well. Community colleges are a wonderful resource for our communities.

    — D Werner · Jan 24, 07:32 AM · #

  3. I, too, teach at a community college, a very large one in CA serving over 100,000 students a semester; like me, many of my colleagues have Ph.D.s and gradually came to terms with D. Werner’s observation that people (ok, folks) look down on the cc’s and those who work and teach there. That attitude has changed in the 15+ years I have been in a cc, as more and more people realize what a “bargain” (compared to a 4-year institution) the cc’s can be. And after all, it’s not where you start, it’s where you finish that counts in terms of your degree. We have an honors program for the student seeking to transfer to a 4-year institution, as well as articulation agreements with the university system. But cc’s don’t only serve these kinds of students and that’s what I have come to really like about the cc academic mission: the diversity of the student population in terms of the various academic goals that they bring with them.

    — Leslie · Jan 24, 08:31 AM · #

  4. For most of my 40+ years in education, it has been a pleasure to serve as President of five community colleges in as many states. The evolution of the role of our countries’ two year colleges in the grand scheme of American higher education that Steve Trachtenberg so eloquently outlines is an amazing success story and its future has never been brighter.
    Why? Quite simply because these 1200+ colleges change lives. As a graduate of a Michigan, two-year college some years ago and as a first generation attendee…my early goal and the one that dominated the thinking of most of my fellow 18 year friends was a production line job in one of the auto plants. Nothing wrong with production lines, but community college opened up so many more doors and changed that entire picture. The rest is history!
    With our current economy being challenged with significant shortages of trained personnel to replace the retiring Baby Boomers, never before has the role of the community colleges been more important to our very survival.
    Thanks President Trachtenberg for a great article that puts the many positive facets of this unique institution in proper perspective.

    — D. Newport · Jan 24, 12:06 PM · #

  5. Wonderful article! As a mother that struggled through college and came out 20 years later (life happens), I totally agree with this article’s viewpoint on the value of community/junior/two-year colleges. I purposely directed my twin sons to a community college near our home because 1) working at a four-year college, I see what happens when students who are not quite prepared for college meander their way through without having had proper guidance, 2) paying for two college bills is just much more than I can do as a single parent, and 3) enjoying what I see in the transformations in my sons from “high school thinking” to “college expectation” is paying off! I am just elated with their progress in college because their public high school education left a bit to be desired and the community college route was what I felt they needed before becoming sucked up into a big college or university. I’ve been faulted for being so hands on with them – “let ‘em go, they’ll make their way.” I see the results of that thinking everyday – drop outs, poor grade, no direction, matriculating as an undecided major for as long as Pell will pay etc. I only had one church member approach me to say, “I really think you are doing the right thing with your boys by sending them to a two-year college; I wish that I’d had sense enough to send my son there first because he ended up dropping out of school and going in to the service. Now, he feels that he can go back to school with a purpose.” My own mother and sister have shunned me because I did not push for my sons to go straight into a four-year college (one that I work for, complete with tuition remission) because of free tuition, etc. They’ll receive their Associates Degree soon and will head on to my employer for their junior and senior year with ease. They understood my reasoning and now say, “Ma, I am so glad that you wanted us to go to “our” school because, we love it. I just wish that I could just stay here for it all.” My son’s two-year college experience has really and truly been a wonderful experience and yes, a blessing for our family.

    — Just a Mom · Jan 24, 12:46 PM · #

  6. Hear! Hear! Or is it “here here” when in print? Either way, it’s heartening for both a comunity college alum and president to see a major university president step up and recognize the historic contribution of community colleges. Thank you, President Trachtenberg.

    — Kevin Drumm · Jan 25, 11:09 AM · #

  7. I have served in community college education for 21 years, beginning as an adjunct English instructor and have held five administrative positions including a presidency. If Walt Whitman were alive today, he would hang out at the local community college campus for it is the one place he could still hear “America Singing.” Community colleges are where immigrants, first-generation higher education students, aspiring technicians, and those Americans seeking education for professional careers, are all co-existing and succeeding at a remarkable rate considering the challenges so many face. At the same time, Whitman he would probably be amazed at how disconnected public policy is from the educational and economic needs of the country. While state legislators and the federal government will send billions of dollars to universities in support of narrowly defined research initiatives that rarely find their way to their undergraduates, community colleges are increasingly underfunded by antiquated formulas that do not address economic reality or acknowledge the pivotal role community colleges play in their own state. When you take your next trip to the doctor, chances are the receptionist, the nurse, the ex-ray technician, and nearly everyone but the doctor, began or completed their degree at a community college. The accident you saw on the way there? The law enforcement officers, the paramedics and first responders, they too were all educated and trained at your community college. And if your state or city recently lost out on landing one of the big Fortune 500 companies still in manufacturing, chances are they went to a location where they new they would have a steady supply of qualified workers and a state sponsored workforce development program that would keep their industry competitive. A conservative estimate suggests that community colleges educate and train students for less than half the cost for the same experience at a university. But our failure to keep up with their economic needs by developing new funding formulas and more policies that strengthen their ability to serve this vital role, are taking their toll. Let’s hope President Trachtenberg article represents the beginning of a turning point in our understanding and appreciation of community colleges. The community college represents the very best about what America still means and what it may yet become.

    — Steven M. Gates · Feb 1, 01:10 PM · #

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