A $100 million competitive grants program from the Obama administration wants to spur free community college, but it doesn’t address low graduation rates for those students.
The grants will allow community colleges to expand tuition-free programs and job-training schemes with businesses, according to Inside Higher Ed.
“The competition is expected to create or strengthen new partnerships and programs between communities, two-year institutions and the business sector in an effort to guide unemployed, underemployed and low-income people into in-demand middle- and high-skill jobs,” Ashley A. Smith wrote.
The administration has touted the program as a continuation of local and state initiatives. It highlighted 27 programs, three of them statewide, and another 17 statewide proposals for free college in a press release. Free community college, the argument goes, builds on the strengths of local and regional economy in a low-cost and high-return manner.
“America’s more than 1,100 community colleges are the backbone of our nation’s postsecondary education and training system,” the release said.
It’s relevant, then, to analyze the results and benefits of community colleges.
Graduation rates at community colleges are abysmal. At two-year public colleges, only 20 percent of students graduate within three years, lower than private non-profit and private for-profit two-year colleges. Enrollment has declined for three years, a contrast to four-year colleges.
Graduation rates can be misleading for community colleges, however. A majority of students attend part time, and transfers can make community colleges look worse than in reality, according to a report from the American Association of Community Colleges. When those factors are controlled, though, the six-year graduation rate for students who finished at their original college, or transferred to another college and then graduated, was only 39 percent. That’s better, but when only 9.8 percent of those students finished with a four-year degree, the results are less impressive.
Within six years, 42.9 percent of full-time students at community colleges graduated, but they earned a two-year degree. Though community colleges favor those time frames for graduation rates, the results are underwhelming. Community colleges make higher education accessible to anyone with a desire for more education, but few students leave the college with a degree, and even fewer in a timely manner.
Reforming community colleges to put students on a path to a degree and improving support programs could help, but the reality of community colleges is a stark contrast from the rhetoric. Most students attend part time and are older. They aren’t high-school graduates attending for core classes before transferring to a four-year college.
The Obama administration has tried to change community colleges into a low-cost alternative to expensive state universities. That might be wise, but the administration needs to be blunt about its goals – and the difficulty that will come from that transformation.
Grants to colleges for more “job-driven training” programs have thus far offered money before evaluating the results of those programs. At a time when community college students struggle most with college costs and student loan defaults, offering more access to federal funds doesn’t guarantee any improvements for those students.
