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Hello Winter!

I enjoyed your discussion and articles regarding the increased popularity of community colleges over four-year institutions. I know you mentioned it has become widespread for community colleges to begin offering bachelor’s degrees; well, I am fortunate enough to work for a community college (South Texas College) that offers three Bachelor’s of Applied Technology, and one Bachelor’s of Applied Science. Also, STC most recently got approved to offer a Bachelor’s in nursing effective Fall 2018! Woo-Hoo!!

Anyhow, in an article by Catherine Morris (2017) she mentions Texas legislature is trying to pass Senate Bill 2118 that “would allow more institutions to offer four-year degrees in high-need areas, like nursing, [and] early childhood and development…the bill has received great support in both the House and Senate…” (para. 2). This bill would open up opportunities for students who cannot afford a university education because tuition has just become much too expensive. A previous study showed that only “62 percent of students who transfer from two-year to four-year institutions go on to earn bachelor’s degree within six years of transferring” (Smith, 2015). It is senseless that higher education institutions are making it challenging for students to transfer and finish a degree. Students should have an easier transition to the university having already completed a two-year degree.

References

Morris, C. (2017, May 25). Texas might increase number of community college offering bachelor's degrees. Diverse Issues in Higher Ed. Retrieved October 09, 2017, from http://diverseeducation.com/article/97074/

Smith, A. A. (2015, March 26). Community college to bachelor's. Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved October 09, 2017, from https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/03/26/nearly-half-four-year-college-graduates-attended-two-year-college

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Today, the cost of a four-year college education is continuing to skyrocket. Most students can no longer realistically afford to go to college without loans and federal financial assistance. In response to the increasing costs of universities, community colleges are becoming a popular option for students. Many are considering starting their education with community colleges in order to save money, transfer into four-year institutions, or pursue certification programs and get into the workforce quicker.

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How Community Colleges Changed the Whole Idea of Education in America

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How Community Colleges Changed the Whole Idea of Education in America

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In January of 2015, President Obama unveiled his "American College Promise" program - a plan to make two years of community college education available free of charge to "everyone who's willing to work for it." In offering the proposal, the president did not just venture a partial solution to the student debt crisis. He joined a growing community of thinkers who see the community college as central to solving a wide variety of problems in higher education, from cost and inclusivity to career-preparedness and community engagement.

The role of problem-solver is one that community colleges are well-equipped to play. Just over a century old, community colleges have been at the forefront of nearly every major development in higher education since their inception. To appreciate the role that community colleges can be expected to play in reforming higher education today, Americans would do well to consider their long history of innovation.

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Community colleges, the United States' unique contribution to higher education worldwide, were the humbler half of the wave of late-19th and early 20th-century innovation that brought America the modern research university and revolutionized the dusty classicism of the country's existing colleges. Born at the heady crosswinds of Gilded Age and Progressive Era politics, two-year institutions of higher learning were designed to address two very different sets of problems in postsecondary education.

Just what were these problems? For creative elitists, the foremost bugbear of higher learning was one of quality. True, Gilded Age America had been blessed with a raft of new institutions, from land-grant universities like Penn State to private research institutions like the University of Chicago. But these universities, in reformers' eyes, were prevented from realizing their true potential by an outmoded institutional model that compelled them to teach generalist subjects to freshmen and sophomores and specialized topics to juniors and seniors.

Instead, they advocated a new model, based on the German system, in which the first two years of college would be separated from the final, research-oriented years of postsecondary study. This model would 'purify' research universities, helping these new schools achieve their mission of stirring the Ivies and other old colleges from their classical obsolescence. It would also guard the gates of the budding research universities, with the new junior colleges, as they were then known, allowing only their finest students to transfer credits to four-year institutions.

To sell the idea of a comprehensive junior college system to taxpayers, however, advocates like University of Chicago president William Rainey Harper had to tailor the system to public concerns. The foremost of these, for the populist-minded public, was not quality but access. While the 19th century had witnessed the creation of a large number of new institutions - including the public, land-grant universities noted above - many were far from the small towns and urban neighborhoods that anchored turn-of-the-century life, and the majority were incredibly expensive, with yearly tuition typically in excess of the average worker's annual income.

Clamoring for both physical and economic access to college learning at a moment when advanced education was becoming key to social mobility (sound familiar?), Americans of a populist persuasion were responsible for the egalitarian streak of the junior colleges that opened beginning in 1901. Inexpensive, often publically funded, and open to a wider cross-section of Americans than many of their four-year counterparts, these junior colleges were celebrated as "people's colleges." Though a far cry from full inclusivity, these male-dominated, majority-white schools nevertheless catered to a broader swath of working-class Americans than nearly any other contemporary educational institution.

Accessibility was not junior colleges' only innovation, however. They were also instrumental in expanding the practical training offered by early land-grant colleges. This function became particularly important as the comprehensive system of junior colleges envisioned by William Rainey Harper and other elitist boosters failed to materialize. Forced to compete with better-known and better-funded institutions for liberal arts students, junior-college educators began to look beyond their role in preparing students for transfer, and instead imagined a position for themselves as vocational trainers.

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Junior colleges' embrace of vocational training began in earnest during the 1930s. Though present in many institutions' curriculum from their earliest days, vocational instruction assumed a profound new importance against the backdrop of the Great Depression. Confronted with thousands of unemployed students who had entered junior colleges when hard times struck, administrators and educators rapidly expanded their 'practical' offerings. These vocational training programs included not just handicrafts and manual arts, but white-collar courses of study like business, accounting, finance, civil engineering, nursing and marketing.

Though these vocational programs anticipated several of the 21st century's fastest-growing college-level courses of study, they were rejected by a many students as a distraction from their goal of attaining a B.A. and deplored by scholars as an effort to moderate students' ambitions. More recently, however, students have warmed to vocational programs, as new research shows that associate degree holders in these fields not only out-earn their counterparts in the liberal arts, but transfer to four-year institutions at a higher rate as well. Vocational training, in other words, has been shown to offer students both security and flexibility - while foreshadowing the trajectory of undergraduate learning as a whole.

In the decades following the Depression, junior colleges - which were quickly renaming themselves community colleges to reflect their intimate relationship with their surrounding regions - underwent a period of unprecedented growth and innovation. Stimulated by favorable notice from educational policy makers in the Truman administration and a flood of World War II and Korean War veterans eager to use their G.I. Bill benefits, two-year schools grew dramatically during the 1940s and 1950s. But their most impressive period of growth arrived in the 1960s. Opening at an average rate of one per week during this decade, community colleges not only absorbed and educated a considerable portion of the Boomer generation; they also inaugurated many of the core features of the 21st century college while pioneering a revolutionary open-doors admission policy.

An even more extraordinary innovation during this period was community colleges' embrace of a diverse student body. Though haunted by a lackluster early record on minority admission, community colleges desegregated more fully and more aggressively than their four-year counterparts, incorporating members of minority groups into a student body that already included large number of young, white working-class men and women; non-traditional adult students; and returning combat veterans. Thanks to these efforts, community colleges now board African American, Latino/a, and immigrant enrollment rates that roughly parallel these groups' representation in American society as a whole.
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To support and accommodate this diverse community, colleges pioneered everything from innovative course formats to campus social services. Indeed, from summer classes and distance learning programs to campus counseling centers, much of the infrastructure that now supports four-year institutions' diversity campaigns was first tested in the community college crucible.

And more recently, two-year institutions have added another kind of diversity, too. Confronting a quickly changing economy, many community colleges turned their attention to adult education and workforce retraining. Community college enrollees in the latter half of the 20th century came to include everyone from curious retirees eager to learn a new skill, to victims of mid-career layoffs in need of a new skillset.

Community colleges are not, of course, beyond reproach. Chronically underfunded, they rely even more heavily upon exploitative adjunct labor arrangements than B.A.-granting institutions. And, in their earnest desire to ensure positive career outcomes for students, many schools have risked becoming publically funded training centers for private concerns.

But thanks to these institutions' long history of innovation, they are well-positioned to redress many of higher education's most pressing problems today, including heightened institutional inequality, skyrocketing student debt and waning undergraduate interest in subjects that do not promise financial rewards. In response to these issues, community colleges offer diversity and affordability-and are thus among the last places in America where students can afford to take a class just because they want to.

Once more, then, community colleges may prove the saving grace of college-level learning in America.
Sean Trainor has a Ph.D. in History & Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Penn State University. He blogs at seantrainor.org. Historians explain how the past informs the present

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How Community Colleges Changed the Whole Idea of Education in America

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In January of 2015, President Obama unveiled his "American College Promise" program - a plan to make two years of community college education available free of charge to "everyone who's willing to work for it." In offering the proposal, the president did not just venture a partial solution to the student debt crisis.

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Why even top tier students should consider community colleges

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Why even top tier students should consider community colleges

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As a top student in high school, Amy Miramontes-Franco knew she was destined for college.

But she surprised even herself when, for financial reasons and because she hadn't yet decided on a major, she began her higher education at a local community college.

"In all honesty, I had this mentality where I had worked so hard, I didn't see myself going to a community college because of my negative view of them," Miramontes said.

Having since graduated from Long Beach City College, a California community college, with a 4.0 grade-point average - at a fraction of the cost she would have paid to go to a four-year university and with faculty support she said was much more personal - Miramontes will enter UCLA this fall as a junior majoring in communications and economics.

And she's changed her mind.

"Now that I've experienced a community college, my perception is completely different," she said. "They're very underestimated."

Long the Rodney Dangerfields of American higher education, community colleges are suddenly getting some respect.

Not all community college students have as good of an experience as Miramontes. Largely open to anyone who applies, they continue to suffer low graduation rates, for instance; just under four in 10 community college students finish a degree within six years, according to the National Student Clearinghouse, which tracks this. And while community colleges attract 45 percent of all of the nation's higher-education enrollment, only 15 percent of high-income students choose them, the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University reports.

So bad has the perception been of community colleges that they themselves are dropping the "community" from their names in many cases. Yet they remain the butt of jokes on late-night talk shows and in other popular culture.

"If I wanted to learn something," said the character Jeff Winger, played by Joel McHale, on the television sitcom "Community," "I wouldn't have come to community college."

But at a time when there's huge pressure for reform in higher education, many community colleges are proving more responsive than their four-year counterparts.

Community colleges in 21 states have added four-year bachelor's degree programs in high-demand fields, for example, and those in California will follow suit next year. They've connected closely with local businesses, and provide education so much more in tune with workforce needs that people who have bachelor's and even master's degrees return to community colleges for training that will get them jobs. Among students who transfer from four-year public universities, more than half now go in the opposite direction of Miramontes and switch to a community college, the National Student Clearinghouse says.

One reason for this may be that nearly 30 percent of graduates of community colleges make more money than their counterparts with bachelor's degrees, other research by the Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce shows. And while that advantage narrows by mid career, it's also true that the community college graduates who benefit from it pay much less on average for their educations - $3,264 per year for tuition and fees, according to the College Board, compared to $8,893 per year at public and $30,094 per year at private four-year colleges and universities.

Their bachelors degrees, many students have discovered, "didn't focus on them getting the job they need," said Michael McCall, president of the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. "Whereas they can get an allied health degree from us and go out and make $60,000 or $70,000 a year."

Community colleges in Tennessee will go completely tuition-free next year, and the same idea is under study in Oregon and being discussed in Indiana, and has been proposed in Texas. Only one in five community college students has to take out loans to pay for school and other expenses, and the average debt for those who do is a comparatively low $2,000 each, The Institute for College Access and Success calculates.

Private foundations have been helping community colleges make themselves more desirable in other ways, too, by underwriting innovations such as programs that speed up the time students take to get degrees, and the federal government has allocated billions to help them train laid-off workers for new high-skill jobs and team up with businesses to create apprenticeships.

But a significant portion of the activity at community colleges has not resulted from money coming in. It's been caused by money running out, as states cut back on spending for public higher education. Enrollment, too, has begun to slide; after jumping nearly 25 percent between the 2007-2008 academic year and 2010-2011, the number of students in community colleges fell nearly 4 percent from 2012 to 2013 and another nearly 3 percent since then, the American Association of Community Colleges reports.

Those realities, along with greater scrutiny and criticism of their performance, mean community colleges have "had to be innovative, had to be entrepreneurial, had to be very creative," said Walter Bumphus, president of the American Association of Community Colleges.

"All of these things have come together all at once to force our community colleges to change," said Eloy Oakley, president and superintendent of the Long Beach Community College District in California, which includes Long Beach City College.

"We have all had to innovate to meet the challenges of the economy and the challenges of state funding cuts. We've had to become more efficient, we've had to change the way we deliver education, and we've had to deal with the increased pressure not only to provide more access, but increase the number of degrees and certificates that we confer."

The community college turnaround has not gone entirely unnoticed, especially by public universities in some states. Those in Colorado and Michigan unsuccessfully opposed letting community colleges give bachelor's degrees. In California they blocked community colleges from offering four-year degrees that are already available from nearby state universities. And public universities in Tennessee resisted making community college there tuition-free.

"We had four-year schools that were going, 'Wow, it's going to be hard for us to compete with free,'" said Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam, who helped push the idea through anyway.

Universities historically haven't paid much attention to their lower-level counterparts, said Debra Bragg, director of the Office of Community College Research and Leadership at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Now it's, 'Golly, what are they doing over there at that community college?'"

Since President Barack Obama made community colleges a centerpiece of a campaign to increase the proportion of Americans with degrees, "That balance of who's getting attention has shifted," Bragg said. "A lot of the college completion agenda has been focused on the community colleges, because that's where policymakers have seen the most room for growth."

And, she said, the most room for improvement, given their poor graduation rates and other problems.

"'We're the underdog, but we can do it, we can innovate. We're more nimble than the universities.' That's their culture and their image of themselves. Some people may look at that and say, 'Not so much.'"

But the scrutiny seems to be having an effect.

"The leadership in community colleges has said, 'Hey, we're in the spotlight, we'd better start doing a little better job here and pay attention to retention and completion," Bragg said. "They had less choice. They had to start doing something different."

Or, as Oakley puts it, "However we got here, it's a good thing."
This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, nonpartisan education-news outlet affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University. PBS NewsHour coverage of higher education is supported by the Lumina Foundation and American Graduate: Let's Make it Happen, a public media initiative made possible by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

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Why even top tier students should consider community colleges

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As a top student in high school, Amy Miramontes-Franco knew she was destined for college. But she surprised even herself when, for financial reasons and because she hadn't yet decided on a major, she began her higher education at a local community college.

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Why More Students are Choosing Community Colleges over Traditional Four-Year Schools

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Why More Students are Choosing Community Colleges over Traditional Four-Year Schools

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Why More Students are Choosing Community Colleges over Traditional Four-Year Schools | CommunityCollegeReview.com

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Community colleges are quickly becoming a key competitor against four year universities - and for many good reasons! Learn about why more students are opting to enroll in their local community college, rather than going straight to four year institutions.

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While many states and cities are still working through the details and funding behind their attempts to create a free community college program, Tennessee has been busy expanding its scholarship.

The state was the first to create a free community college program. Now in its second year, the Tennessee Promise has led to student retention gains even as the number of participating students increases.

That success was highlighted recently by the state's move to expand the Promise to include all adult residents through Tennessee Reconnect -- which already allowed adult residents to earn a certificate for free at any Tennessee college of applied technology. (The expanded program requires adults to not already have an associate or bachelor's degree, be a state resident for at least a year, apply for federal student aid, participate in an advising program and attend college at least part time.)

"One of the things we always heard was, 'What are we doing with adults?'" said Mike Krause, executive director of the Tennessee Higher Education Commission. "And now we've been able to answer that question. We built a seamless message that is about everyone going to college."

More than 33,000 students have received the Promise scholarship and enrolled in college since the program began in 2015, with nearly 23,300 enrolled in 2016.

But, as some states and cities are learning, replicating an initiative like the Tennessee Promise isn't an exact science. And there are a few common barriers many programs have faced, including finances and politics.

"Money is the logical explanation," said Laura Perna, director of the Alliance for Higher Education and Democracy at the University of Pennsylvania, who has examined more than 150 Promise programs to assemble a database of characteristics. "Many states have a number of programs spending a lot of money on different types of financial aid already. So it's important for a state to consider the resources they have available."

For instance, Oregon, which is using money from the state budget to fund its Promise initiative, allocated $10 million to the program last year. However, officials are estimating the cost will rise to $13.5 million as the state deals with a budget shortfall. Oregon has also seen some of its universities object to the Promise money, with some arguing for more funding for a state scholarship that benefits low-income students who attend public, four-year institutions.

Yet in Tennessee, the program's expansion is less controversial because it won't directly cost taxpayers. The state is expecting the expansion to cost about $10 million a year, but those funds will come from lottery dollars. The main Promise program also is primarily funded from the state's lottery reserves, which were placed in an endowment.

This year the total cost for the scholarship is $25.3 million.

"If you're going to establish a program, you want it to be politically and financially sustainable," Perna said. "Certainly we know from research that money matters, but it's not the only thing that matters if you want to improve college attainment for underserved students."

Where Oregon is facing a backlash from its four-year institutions, Tennessee allows public and private universities that offer an associate degree program to participate in the Promise program.

Four percent of Tennessee Promise students are enrolled at private institutions this year, with a 2 percent annual gain, according to the state higher education office.

"The compromise we made with the governor put us in a position where we would not oppose [the Promise]," said Claude Pressnell Jr., president of the Tennessee Independent Colleges & Universities Association. "We found, due to transfers and adult learners, our enrollment has gone up slightly over the past few years."

While enrollment has increased at all the state's private institutions, Pressnell said three in particular have seen enrollment gains and the largest share of Tennessee Promise students: Cumberland University, Martin Methodist College and Carson-Newman University.

All three of those private institutions have recruited Promise students, either by agreeing to match the scholarship with institutional aid or by hosting Promise orientation sessions on their campuses, he said.

"I don't think the other states know we do it," Pressnell said. "It's billed as a community college program, and they don't realize that it's portable to a four-year institution with an associate degree. Even in this state, it's the least publicized piece of the program."

Among the state's four-year public universities, however, some institutions have taken an enrollment hit in recent years. At the University of Tennessee Martin, for instance, undergraduate enrollment is down 2.4 percent since last year, according to state data. The campus doesn't offer associate degree programs.

However, UT Martin officials are more likely to praise the Promise program than blame it for low enrollment. After all, the university has seen a 14 percent decrease in enrollment over five years -- a trend that predates the Promise.

"We think the Tennessee Promise program is a good thing," said Keith Carver, chancellor for UT Martin. "When you talk about a state trying to get 55 percent of its population to a postsecondary degree, whether it's a technical certificate, an associate's degree at one of the state's community colleges or a four-year degree from one of our four-year colleges or universities, that's a really good thing."

Carver said it is reasonable to suspect that the Promise program has had some influence on the decrease in Martin's undergraduate enrollment. But because the population was already in a decline, the reason for the change has been difficult to quantify.

UT Martin faces other issues that impact enrollment more -- an overall declining population in rural western Tennessee and high unemployment when compared to the rest of the state.

Instead, UT Martin is focusing its efforts on transfer students.

The campus is up 4.3 percent in Promise students who have transferred in, Carver said.

"As tough as our jobs are, in terms of dwindling pool of students, we're having to work much more strategically," he said.
Beyond the Money
Chris Baldwin, a senior director at Jobs for the Future, said as other states examine Tennessee and look at creating Promise programs, it's important to note that the changes the state made weren't decided overnight.

"What Tennessee has been able to do and the success they've had is broader than free community college," he said. "For one, it fits the performance funding they've had for a long time. There's a robust set of things they've done around developmental education and streamlining through guided pathways ... I'd hesitate to say the success is purely about free tuition, so if you're replicating it, it would mean you have to replicate a lot."

Baldwin points to the Detroit Promise scholarship, which, while generating a lot of interest in community college, doesn't solve the underlying problems students have, such as academic challenges and not having financial stability in their lives to sustain enrollment and be successful.

As New York pursues a free college program and other, similar Promise programs emerge across the country, the question will be what they are doing beyond free tuition, he said.

In Tennessee, officials feel their biggest impact hasn't been financial but messaging. Perhaps that's why Krause said he isn't surprised other states haven't exactly replicated the Tennessee model.

"It's amazing to see more states haven't realized by changing the messaging and leveraging financial aid ... it takes time," he said. "A lot of people are watching to see how it goes through a full cohort."

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Replicating Tennessee's approach to free community college takes money and more

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While many states and cities are still working through the details and funding behind their attempts to create a free community college program, Tennessee has been busy expanding its scholarship. The state was the first to create a free community college program.

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It is my belief that community colleges are an integral part of higher education since they offer a college level courses at a fraction of the cost of their four your counterparts. This fact often makes community colleges more appealing to those starting their academic career and the numbers support this idea. Four of the top five schools the state of Texas regarding attendance are community college systems.

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Biggest Colleges in Texas 2017 - CollegeStats.org

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Texas is home to many large colleges for prospective students to explore. Those who thrive in a learning environment with many other students coming from different backgrounds and cultures will appreciate the large college experiences. Big colleges in the state are equipped with well-stocked libraries and state-of-the-art research facilities.