CFHE Released First Report, Examines Community College Access

The Center for the Future of Higher Education—the “virtual think tank” of the Campaign for the Future of Higher Education—has released its first report, Closing the Door, Increasing the Gap: Who’s not going to (community) college. It’s written by Gary Rhoades, former general secretary of the AAUP, and in the report, Rhoadesexplains that more than 400,000 students are turned away from community colleges each year, simply because schools do not have the necessary funding to meet demand.

Rhoades then asks which students are having these opportunities denied to them. The report emphasizes that they are not a random sampling of applicants. When public universities face budget shortfalls and other financial cuts, they often raise tuition, as we have been seeing over the past few years. This in turn means that some middle-income students, who would otherwise attend these universities, are now priced out, and they turn to community colleges instead (Rhoades also cites “the trend of community colleges offering four-year degrees” as an added reason why middle-income students may be applying in higher numbers). When forced to compete with these applicants, lower-income students face tougher odds. The report also offers evidence that minority applicants are particularly hard-hit when it comes to getting squeezed out of higher ed.

The report also discusses the trend of community colleges emphasizing training programs, which are intended to help students get jobs in the short run, at the expense of a broader liberal arts education, which could help them pursue a bachelor’s degree or a further graduate degree later in their academic careers. The conclusion includes ideas for how to correct these trends in higher ed. You can read the report online by clicking here.

3 thoughts on “CFHE Released First Report, Examines Community College Access

  1. You say “The report also discusses the trend of community colleges emphasizing training programs, which are intended to help students get jobs in the short run, at the expense of a broader liberal arts education, which could help them pursue a bachelor’s degree or a further graduate degree later in their academic careers. The conclusion includes ideas for how to correct these trends in higher ed.”

    Community colleges have had training programs with AA or AS as terminal, working degrees, for decades. It is a substantial part of their mission—they’re not just (or even primarily) farm schools for 4-year colleges. I’m not sure that reducing their vocational mission is a desirable goal, nor that an increase in training programs at community colleges is a trend to “correct”.

  2. Well, I can’t speak for the CFHE report and I wasn’t involved in researching or writing it, so all I can offer in reply is to quote from the source: Rhodes writes in the introduction that “policymakers are narrowing the focus of community colleges to fulfilling a short-term workforce development role that prepares workers for relatively low-wage jobs rather than Bachelor’s degree programs into which students could transfer.” That is the analysis I was writing about.

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