Keeping America's Promise

Contents
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2
Going to College: Not What It Used To Be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Russell E. Hamm
Figure 1. Multiple-Role Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Figure 2. Limitations on Working Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Figure 3. Persistence to Degree For Traditional and Nontraditional Students. . . . . . . . 30
Figure 4. Reasons Adults 25 and Older Attend College . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Figure 5. Undergraduate Perceptions of Their Relationship to Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Figure 6. Positions Attained by Successfully Remediated Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Defining the Gaps: Access and Success at America?s Community Colleges . . . . 35
Derek V. Price
Figure 1. Perception That Loans Limit College Choices, by Race/Ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . 36
Figure 2. Persistence to Certificate or Degree Over Six-Year Period,
By Race/Ethnicity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Figure 3. Percentage Distribution of Students by Risk Factor
and Type of Institution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
Why Learning? The Value of Higher Education to Society and the Individual . . . . . 39
Anthony P. Carnevale and Donna M. Desrochers
Figure 1. Distribution of Education in Jobs, 1973 and 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Figure 2. Distribution of Education in Office Jobs, 1973 and 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Figure 3. Distribution of Education in Education and Health Care Jobs,
1973 and 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Figure 4. Distribution of Education in Technology Jobs, 1973 and 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Figure 5. Employment and Education, 1973 and 2000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Figure 6. Earnings Depend Increasingly on Educational Attainment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Figure 7. The Demand for College-Educated Workers Has Risen Faster
Than Supply Since 1979 (a) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Figure 8. The Demand for College-Educated Workers Has Risen Faster
Than Supply Since 1979 (b) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Figure 9. The Labor Force Spans All Skill Levels, But Projected Job Growth
Favors High Skill Levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Figure 10. Labor Demand Will Outstrip Supply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
DISCUSSION GUIDE
Keeping America?s Promise: A Discussion Guide for State and
Community College Leaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
Katherine Boswell
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This publication is the culmination of efforts begun three years ago following a dinner gathering hosted by Ted
Hullar, Director of the Higher Education Program at The Atlantic Philanthropies, Inc. The group that evening included
Terry O?Banion, president emeritus of the League for Innovation in the Community College; Bob McCabe, Senior
League Fellow, MacArthur ?genius? award recipient, and long-time president of Miami-Dade Community College; and
Kay McClenney, who at that time was serving as vice president of the Education Commission of the States. The discussion
was not about basketball or the weather. It was about community colleges and their enormously important and
urgent role in making good on the promises of opportunity and equity in American life. It was also about the need for
change and the challenges in making change happen.
The result of that meeting, some months later, was a grant from The Atlantic Philanthropies for a joint project
between the League and the Education Commission of the States. The work was to be focused specifically on articulating
serious challenges that face America?s community colleges ? challenges that need to be addressed both at the
campus level and through state and federal policy changes. During the course of planning, the theme for the initiative
emerged: Keeping America?s Promise.
In the ensuing months, the initiative commissioned a series of short working briefs about the changing characteristics
of the community college student population, about the escalating demand for postsecondary education in
the knowledge economy, about changes in the way Americans are going to college, and about gaps that exist across
groups in both educational access and educational attainment. All of the papers address implications for community
colleges. Complementing these pieces is a discussion guide depicting the ways that state higher education policy may
either support or thwart the American promise of opportunity and equity. These papers are provided as companions
and supplements to the opening challenge essay written by Kay McClenney, who presently serves as the director of the
Community College Survey of Student Engagement and adjunct professor, Community College Leadership Program at
The University of Texas at Austin.
The challenge essay, drawing on the data and observations presented in the working briefs, discusses the important
promises related to American higher education, especially those involving people committed to the work of the nation?s
community colleges. What promises have we made? What are the meaningful commitments we ought to make? If we
are to keep these promises, what are the challenges ahead?
The League and the Education Commission of the States hope that this Keeping America?s Promise initiative will
serve to enrich the national dialogue at the policy and institutional levels about the important education challenges we
face as a nation and the critical roles that must and will be played by our oft-unheralded community colleges. We would
particularly like to acknowledge Katherine Boswell and Cynthia Wilson, who co-edited this volume and provided
leadership for the initiative, and the efforts of Kay McClenney, who shared her passion and deep commitment to the
work of America?s two-year colleges and provided valuable advice and counsel to the project. We express our appreciation
to the other authors whose commitment to community college education fills this volume: Anthony Carnevale,
Donna Desrochers, Russell Hamm, Mario Martinez, and Derek Price. To Terry O?Banion, Robert McCabe, Cindy
Miles, Mary Jane Robins, Elaine Thatcher, Sarah Meyer, Robert Palaich, Cynthia Barnes, and Charles Coble, we express
thanks for contributions at various points in the initiative?s life. We also gratefully acknowledge Marian McDevitt,
who prepared the stunning illustrations, and Angie Wingert, designer of the publication. Finally, we would especially
like to acknowledge The Atlantic Philanthropies, Inc., without whose generous support this project would not have
been possible.
Ted Sanders Mark David Milliron
President President
Education Commission of the States League for Innovation in the Community College
Foreword
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
c h a l l e n g e e s s a y
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
Community colleges today enroll almost half
of all undergraduate students in the U.S.
c h a l l e n g e e s s a y
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
America and Americans make a lot of promises, about a
lot of different things. Just for the fun of it, I googled ?keeping
the promise.? There will be no surprise about the array
of things I found: promises of instant wealth through questionable
real estate transactions and instant organizational
effectiveness through IT outsourcing; promises and reminders
of promises about public school reform, full funding of
the global AIDS act, equal access for the differently abled,
deposit insurance reform, and prescription drugs for older
Americans.
There?s more, though. In the email inbox I find promises
of many things. A cure for baldness. Get rich quick by laundering
money for a stranger in Africa. Sexual virility. Lose
50 pounds or gain three inches. Then there are the personal
promises, made to ourselves and those closest to us: When
I grow up?. You?ll understand when you?re older (my son
reminded me of that one). I promise to do my duty to God
and my country. I?ll call you next Sunday. The check?s in the
mail. Happily ever after. In the year 2004, I resolve?. ?Til
death do us part.
There are the political promises, remarkably plentiful
in this election year, but always with us. Securing Social
Security. Reducing class size. Ending welfare as we know
it. Finding weapons of mass destruction. Peace in our time.
No Child Left Behind. There are promises that cut across
the cultural, commercial, personal, and political aspects of
our lives. I pledge allegiance to the flag. Hard work will be
rewarded. A chicken in every pot. A laptop in every lap.
America has made many promises. In the Constitution,
?we the people? committed to one another to ?promote
the general welfare? and to ?secure the blessings of liberty
to ourselves and our posterity.? Consider these American
promises, too: ?Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled
masses yearning to breathe free.? ?Life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness.? ?Liberty and justice for all.? One man,
one vote. Equal treatment under the law. And to the victims
and survivors of the World War II Holocaust: ?Never again.
Never, never again.?
The most fundamental American promises, though, are
the promises of opportunity and equity for every individual.
Every individual. This is the land where a person born in
humble circumstances, if she is willing to work hard, can
rise to the highest level, can grow wealthy and secure, can
contribute, can become president.
Opportunity = Education. Perhaps one of the most
fundamental developments at the end of the 20th
century is this: Opportunity in this country is more and more
a function of education, and that reality is something that sets
America apart. As Tony Carnevale has observed:
In today?s economy, access to postsecondary
education or training has become the threshold
requirement for individual career success?.
Unlike the European welfare states that guarantee
access to income and benefits irrespective of
individual educational performance, our increasing
reliance on education as the arbiter of economic
opportunity allows us to expand opportunity
without surrendering individual responsibility.
As a result, we emphasize equality of educational
opportunity rather than equality of economic
outcomes. (Carnevale, 2004, p. 39)
Evidence of the country?s commitment to educational
opportunity has come, over the years, through some major
public policy commitments. The pre-eminent examples
include the Morrill Act of 1862, establishing the land grant
colleges; the GI Bill, which was invented as a way to do
something productive with all of those World War II
veterans who were coming home and flooding the labor
market, but which also effectively assailed the notion that
higher education was only for the elites; the Truman
Commission, which in 1947 called for the establishment of
K E E P I N G AME R I C A ? S P R OMI S E :
C H A L L E N G E S F O R C OMMU N I T Y C O L L E G E S
Kay M. McClenney
c h a l l e n g e e s s a y {
Opportunity in this country is more and more
a function of education.
c h a l l e n g e e s s a y
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
a national network of low-cost public community colleges;
and Pell Grants, our most important source of need-based
financial aid for college students.
Through these commitments, America has worked to
keep its promises of opportunity and of education that
opens doors to opportunity. It is time now to revive the
discussion of this nation?s important promises, in particular
the promises related to American higher education and
especially the promises involving people committed to the
work of the nation?s community colleges. What are the
promises we, as a nation, have made? What are the promises
we ought to make? Are they empty promises, pipe dreams?
Or, are they real, meaningful commitments? If we are to
keep these promises, what are the challenges ahead?
TRENDS THAT MATTER
To begin, it will be useful to take a quick look at the
context within which we are all working. Obviously, the
multiple developments in our global and local environments
provide a plethora of forces that community college leaders
must take into account. But for the present purpose, it will
suffice to highlight briefly four trends that matter significantly
in understanding both our promises and our challenges in
keeping them.
TREND 1. Escalating Demand for Postsecondary Education
This is a reality that is well known: In the 21st century,
America?s ability to educate its people ?will increasingly
determine its economic competitiveness as the country shifts
from an industrial to an information economy? (Carnevale
and Desrochers, 2004, p. 39). To put it bluntly, the fastestgrowing
and best-paying jobs in the American economy are
those that require at least some college experience. And as
Tom Mortenson (2004) says, ?Those who get this education
can participate. Those who don?t can?t.?
Furthermore, there is a companion reality that presidents,
governors, and other political leaders increasingly understand;
that is the fact that ?increases in a country?s overall
level of educational attainment cause corresponding
increases in its overall rate of economic growth. Increasing a
country?s average level of schooling by one year can increase
economic growth by about 5 to 15 percent? (Carnevale and
Desrochers, 2004, p. 39, emphasis added).
Carnevale and Desrochers (2004) paint a powerful
picture of future workforce needs:
As the baby boomers with postsecondary education
retire over the next 20 years, it will be dif-
ficult to produce a sufficient number of Americans
with postsecondary education or training to meet
the economy?s needs. Shortages of workers with
some college-level skills could increase to more
than 14 million by 2020. (p.42)
In addition to the increasingly urgent needs of the
economy, the baby-boom echo will boost the numbers of
high school graduates through most of the current decade.
There will be state and regional variations in the impact on
higher education, but generally, even if current college
participation levels are simply maintained, community
colleges across the nation will likely see about a 13 percent
increase in enrollment over 2000 levels by 2015. If efforts to
increase participation rates to the level achieved in the
highest-performing states are successful, that enrollment
increase could be as much as 46 percent (Martinez, 2004).
Civil Society and Quality of Life. As Carnevale and
Desrochers correctly assert, ?postsecondary education
is about more than dollars and cents. It does more than
provide foot soldiers for the American economy? (Carnevale
and Desrochers, 2004, p. 39). In fact, an individual?s educational
attainment level is powerfully correlated with many of
the things that we as Americans care most about in our society.
The more educated a person is, the more likely she is to
be gainfully employed, to pay taxes, to participate in civic life
and democratic processes, to vote. At the same time, he is
less likely to be dependent on public support, less likely to be
on welfare or in prison, and more likely to be able to provide
for the educational and health-related needs of his children.
TREND 2. Continuously Changing Student ?Mix?
Community college students are diverse already, as these
institutions serve about half of all of the minority undergraduates
in the U.S. Still, though, the student population will
become increasingly diverse in every way: more students of
color, more English language learners, more first-generation
college students, more adult students, more students from
low-income families.
An individual?s educational attainment level is
powerfully correlated with many of the things
that we as Americans care most about in our society.
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K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
According to the National Center for Education Statistics
(2002), the definition of a nontraditional student is one who
is financially independent, attends part time, works full
time, delays enrollment after high school, has dependents,
is a single parent, or does not have a high school diploma.
Under that definition, in the 1999 academic year, almost 90
percent of all community college students were nontraditional
(Hamm, 2004). Here are representative facts describing
the student population:
? About two-thirds of community college students are
part-time students, compared to about a quarter of students
in baccalaureate institutions (Voorhees as cited in
Hamm, 2004).
? 54 percent of community college students work full time
(NCES as cited in Hamm, 2004).
? 34 percent have dependents, 16 percent are single parents,
and 23 percent spend 6 to 20 hours a week commuting
to their college classes (CCSSE, 2003).
? Over 45 percent of community college enrollees are firstgeneration
college students (Wilson, 2004).
? Almost 44 percent of community college students are 25
or older (Wilson, 2004).
TREND 3. Going to College: Not What It Used to Be
In the not-too-distant past, going to college typically
meant going off to college, generally an 18-year-old leaving
home to live on or near campus, attending classes full
time and, usually, earning the degree four years later at the
place where he started. In stark contrast, Americans now use
higher education in much different ways.
How students go to college. Many of today?s students
attend part time, often going to multiple institutions before
attaining a credential, enrolling in two or more institutions
simultaneously, stopping in and out, transferring in all
directions, and so on. In fact, only one in six current undergraduate
students in the U.S. is 18 to 24 years old, attends
school full time, and lives on campus.
According to the Community College Survey of Student
Engagement (2003), 35 percent of community college
students began their college studies somewhere other than
their current institution. More and more are concurrently
enrolled in high school and community college (12,000 in
New York City, for example, and at least 3 percent nationally);
a significant proportion already have a degree (about
16 percent on average, but the numbers go up to around 20
percent or more in some locations); and at least another 6
percent take courses simultaneously at another college or
university.
Generally, students have more choices available to them,
involving more delivery options on campus, in the workplace,
or online. They are shopping for educational experiences
and trying to piece them together in ways that make
sense. Or not.
Why students go to college. With regard to educational
goals, it is now increasingly well understood that community
college students have many different goals; that an individual
student often has more than one; and that, especially if the
college does its job right, the goals are likely to change over
time. Among the goals students cite for their college attendance
are these:
? 62 percent want to obtain knowledge in a specific area
? 58 percent aspire to obtain an associate degree
? 47 percent plan to transfer to a four-year institution
? 59 percent want to obtain job-related skills
? 35 percent aim to complete a certificate
? 33 percent need to update their job skills
? 28 percent want to change careers
? 23 percent say they are taking courses for self-improvement
(CCSSE, 2003)
Where students go to college. Community colleges today
enroll almost half of all undergraduate students in the U.S.
However, for-profit institutions now award at least 10
More likely to?
Be gainfully employed
Pay taxes
Participate in civic life and
democratic processes
Vote
Be able to provide for education
and health of children
Less likely to?
Be dependent on public
support
Be on welfare
Be in prison
F1. BENEFITS OF EDUCATION
Source: Carnevale and Desrochers, 2004
F2. COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENT CHARACTERISTICS
Work full time 54%
Have dependents 34%
Are single parents 16%
Commute to class 6 to 20 hours a week 23%
Are first-generation college students 45%
Are 25 or older 44%
Sources: CCSSE, 2003; Hamm, 2004; Wilson, 2004
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percent of all associate degrees, and their share of the twoyear
college market is 28 percent, up from 19 percent in a
decade (Kelly as cited in Hamm, 2004). This growth occurs
despite the significantly higher costs to students. Furthermore,
there are now more than 2,000 corporate universities
in the U.S. alone, many of them offering associate and
baccalaureate degrees. Motorola University, for example,
has 400 full-time faculty and 800 part timers at 99 sites in
more than 20 countries, serving 100,000 students a year
(Talisayon as cited in Hamm, 2004).
Rapid escalation in the numbers of students taking
online courses is changing the face of the higher education
enterprise. According to the U.S. Department of Education,
about 54,000 online courses were offered in 1998, with 1.6
million students enrolled. Seventy-two percent of public
two-year institutions offered distance education courses
(Carnevale, 2000).
If this looks like a complex, dizzying picture, then it
helps lead to an understanding of the talk about ?swirling
students,? and the myriad implications for needed changes
in institutional work.
TREND 4. Funding Squeeze
Here?s a sobering thought: As enrollment continues to
grow, funding will continue to fail to keep pace with either
inflation or the number of students being served (Martinez,
2004). In high-enrollment states like California, for example,
community colleges for some time have been serving large
numbers of students for whom they do not receive enrollment-
based funding from the state. Furthermore, there are
features of state funding mechanisms across the country that
either fail to support or are downright hostile to important
aspects of the community college mission. Examples include
fiscal policy related to remedial education and to financial
aid, or more accurately, the lack of it, for part-time students.
In other words, there are few financial incentives for
community colleges to do the work that society most needs
them to do.
COMMUNITY COLLEGE PROMISES
With this context in mind, consider the important promises
that community colleges have made to their students
and their communities.
PROMISE 1. Provide and Promote Access to College.
?Well, of course,? is the common response. ?That goes
without saying.? But the influx of aspiring students may well
mask some issues that demand attention. The truth is that
college access in America is deeply at risk. In particular, the
income-based disparities for both participation in higher
education and degree completion in this country are scandalous.
The threats have to do with finance, to be sure. But
inadequate academic preparation for college and disparities
across groups are just as serious.
Financing Higher Education. Funding remains a critical
issue in higher education access, evidenced by these facts:| Higher tuition rates and slashed state appropriations
denied at least 250,000 prospective students access to
college in the 2003-2004 fiscal year, according to the
National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education.| Among high school graduates, 77 percent of high-income
students enroll in college immediately after high school
versus 50 percent of students from low-income families
(Price, 2004).| The shifts from grants to loans and from need-based to
merit-based aid (that is, toward middle-class entitlements),
together with the lack of financial aid for parttime
students, conspire to make participation and success
an ever greater challenge for low-income students.
There is another possibility that may create even deeper
dilemmas. As traditional baccalaureate institutions continue
both to increase tuition and to limit enrollments, there may
be a shift to community colleges of more highly qualified
students who are seeking a lower-cost alternative. This
prospect might be welcomed by some faculty, and it could
also be seen as an easy way of improving performance for
accountability reporting. After all, the easiest way for a
college to look better is to be more selective in accepting
students; that?s what Harvard does. But simply serving the
more qualified students will not keep the promise.
Academic Preparation. Almost 50 percent of all firsttime
community college students are assessed as underprepared
for the academic demands of college-level courses
(Roueche and Roueche, 1999). The challenges in this regard
are, of course, typically more acute for low-income students
and students of color - those whose previous schooling has
served them least well.
For-Profit Institutions| 10% of all
associate degrees| 28% of community
college market
Corporate Universities| 2,000+ in U.S.| associate and
baccalaureate
degrees
Online Courses| 54,000 online
courses| 1.6 million
students enrolled| 72% of public
associate-degree
granting institutions
offered distance
education
options
F3. NONTRADITIONAL LEARNING OPTIONS
Sources: Hamm, 2004; Carnevale, 2000
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Racial and Ethnic Disparities. Among the population of
Americans age 18 to 24 ? the traditional college age group ?
39 percent of Whites were enrolled in college versus 30
percent of African Americans and 19 percent of Hispanics
(Price, 2004). Also, 66 percent of White high school graduates
enrolled in college immediately after high school versus
56 percent of African Americans and 49 percent of Hispanics
(Price, 2004).
And the men. Men are underrepresented by a growing
margin, comprising only 43 percent of community college
enrollment.
PROMISE 2. Improve Student Attainment.
Painted in summary form, the community college picture
looks like this:
Community colleges have inarguably the toughest job
in American higher education. These are open-admissions
institutions. They serve disproportionately high numbers of
poor students and students of color. Many of their students
are the ones who were least well served by their previous
public school education and therefore most likely to have
academic challenges as well as fiscal ones. Community
college students are three to four times more likely than
students in four-year colleges to reflect factors that put them
at risk of not completing their education. To support
services for these students, the community colleges on
average charge only 37 percent of the tuition and fees
charged at four-year institutions and receive a fraction of the
per-student appropriations of state dollars. And these
students are likely to be coming to community colleges in
ever higher numbers over the next decade at least, even as
higher education appropriations as a proportion of state
budgets continue to decline. Add all of this to the college
attendance patterns described earlier, including the fact that
students come to community colleges with many different
goals and certainly not always intending to attain a degree or
to transfer.
This is a reasonable description of the community college
reality, and it is the truth. It is a truth those of us in community
college education have become expert in articulating to
policymakers and the media. It is a truth that provides
important context for understanding institutional
performance and accountability. Nonetheless, it is essential
to communicate a tough message: Community college
educators too often hide behind that truth. With that truth as
a shield, we too often fail to look hard at our record with
regard to student attainment, too often don?t ask ourselves
the hard questions about how we are doing and what we
could do better.
The American Council on Education recently issued a
statement with sector-by-sector statistics on graduation and
persistence rates, with this report about community colleges:
One-quarter of students who entered a public twoyear
institution in 1995-1996 with the goal of earning
a degree or certificate had attained a credential at
that institution by 2001 [six years later]. However,
it is important to note that many students enter
community colleges with educational goals other
than degree attainment, and nearly 60 percent of
entering students attend half-time or less. In addition,
nearly one-third (31 percent) of students
who began at these institutions transferred to other
institutions. After considering transfer students,
39 percent of beginning students who entered at a
public two-year institution had earned a degree or
certificate within six years. More than 17 percent
of students who entered community colleges in
1995-1996 were still enrolled six years later, resulting
in an overall persistence and attainment rate of 56
percent. (ACE, 2003)
This is a fairly balanced statement, and ACE was apt in
applying the rationale that we in community colleges have
practiced so well. The question we have to ask ourselves, and
to discuss seriously with colleagues on campus, is whether
this is good enough. I would answer that it is not.
There is a more alarming piece, though. Another analysis
shows that 38 percent of White students who began at a
community college earned a degree or certificate within six
years versus 26 percent of African Americans and 29 percent
of Hispanics (Price, 2004).
F5. SIX-YEAR COMPLETION RATE BY RACE/ETHNICITY
White 38%
African American 26%
Hispanic 29%
Source: Price, 2004
With regard specifically to retention, for community
colleges nationally, the drop-out rate from the first to the
second year is around 50 percent. A closer look reveals that
low-income and minority students are too often the ones
F4. COLLEGE ENROLLMENT TRENDS
BY RACE/ETHNICITY, 1999
African
Race/Ethnicity White American Hispanic
18-24 year olds enrolled in college 39% 30% 19%
Enroll immediately after high school 66% 56% 49%
graduation
Source: Price, 2004
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most likely to drop out. Another important truth is that we
in education know about educational practices that contribute
to higher levels of student persistence and learning. We
need to do more of what we know.
PROMISE 3. Focus on Learning.
Thanks to Terry O?Banion, to Bob Barr and John Tagg,
and to many others in the higher education field, there has
been a near tidal wave of interest in work that helps colleges
become more powerfully and effectively focused on student
learning. Of course, just about every college likes to think
that it is ?learning centered.? After all, educators ask, ?Isn?t
that the business of higher education??
Of course, the honest answer to that question is, ?Sure,
well ? maybe ? sometimes.? The colleges that seriously take
on the concept of ?the learning college? realize that there is
substantial and challenging work involved. A piece written
for the American Association of Higher Education describes
six fundamental characteristics of a learning-centered
institution:
1. The institution has clearly defined outcomes for
student learning.
2. The institution systematically assesses and documents
student learning.
3. Students participate in a diverse array of engaging
learning experiences aligned with required
outcomes and designed in accord with good
educational practice.
4. Data about student learning typically prompt
reflection, decisions, and action.
5. The institution emphasizes student learning in its
processes for recruiting, hiring, orienting, deploying,
evaluating, and developing personnel.
6. Key institutional documents and policies, collegial
effort, and leadership behavior consistently reflect a
focus on learning (McClenney, 2003).
Assuming Collective Responsibility for Student
Learning. It is important to mention one of the most
significant cultural changes that must occur in this work.
By and large, the business of teaching and learning in
American colleges and universities has traditionally been a
dramatically isolated and individualistic enterprise. The
faculty member designs his own course, develops her own
tests, sets his own standards, and gives her own grades, all
the while declaring, ?My classroom is my kingdom.?
Collective responsibility for student learning is not
something most faculty members learned to value in
graduate school.
But the League for Innovation in the Community
College?s Learning College Project revealed that it is precisely
that sense of collective responsibility, cutting across
classrooms, disciplines, departments, and divisions, that is
requisite to development of a learning-centered college. At
the end of the three-year project, a member of one of the
college teams said, ?The big answer to, ?What?s new here??
is that people are taking more collective responsibility for
student learning.?
A serious focus on learning almost inevitably leads to
other challenging questions among colleagues. One such
question is, What kind of learning are we trying to achieve?
Is it the kind of learning that too often results from the
lecture method and multiple-choice exams, what the cognitive
scientists are calling surface learning? That?s the learning
that lasts until approximately 20 minutes after the final
exam, at which time it is literally dumped from the brain.
Or do we seek to produce deep learning, the kind of learning
that only occurs through application and performance,
through transfer to and use in new situations? That?s the
learning that lasts.
There is yet another important question: ?How good is
good enough?? What are our standards for student learning
and student academic progress? A few real examples illustrate
the pertinence of the question:
? The three-year graduation rate for students at College X
is 14 percent, which is about average for similar colleges.
? The success rate for Introductory Biology students at
College Y is 30 percent.
? In College Z, 50 percent of the students who begin
developmental education courses in September are still
enrolled at the end of the semester.
If 86 percent of our students are not graduating, if 70
percent are not successful in an introductory science course,
if half of the students who begin developmental education
have withdrawn from the college by the end of the term, is
this good enough? In the end, ?Is this good enough?? is a
question that must be asked and answered by the faculty and
administrative leaders in every college. And when the discussions
take place, those faculty and those administrators
are defining the meaning of quality at that college, defining
the meaning of the associate degree.
PROMISE 4. Embrace Accountability.
No longer a news flash for most higher education leaders
is the fact that accountability is here to stay. The actions of
state legislatures and the work on reauthorization of the
federal Higher Education Act assure that as postsecondary
education becomes more important to the economy and
resources become tighter and tighter, there will be a continuc
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K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
ing and escalating level of interest in the results that higher
education produces with the public?s money.
This is, or can be, good news. Accountability is not just
inevitable; it is a good thing. It is a good thing because it is
in the public interest. Community colleges, overwhelmingly,
are public institutions. Community colleges are making
public promises. And community colleges have an obligation
to publicly report results. The urgent priority for these
institutions is to be involved in shaping accountability
systems so that they are appropriate to community college
missions and students, and so that they serve rather than
thwart the access and attainment promises.
One healthy challenge is proactively to define appropriate
indicators of performance, and there is important work
occurring on this front in Florida, Massachusetts, and other
states around the country, as well as in several foundationsupported
initiatives.
PROMISE 5. We Must - and We Will - Close the Gap.
As made clear by data cited above, there remains in
American higher education a significant gap in educational
attainment between students from high socioeconomic
levels and students who are poor, between White students
and their African-American and Hispanic peers. The gap is
dangerous. It is intolerable. It is a blight on America?s future.
And it is worse in community colleges than elsewhere in
higher education.
Of course, the students who come to community colleges
are the students who are already most at risk. They experience
three to four times the risk, in fact, of their peers in
traditional baccalaureate institutions. But guess what? These
are the students we in community colleges serve. Community
colleges signed up for the open-door admissions policy.
Community colleges take these students? tuition money (or
the aid money that pays it) and count them as FTEs. And it
is crucially important, both to the individual students and
to wider society, that they be successful in reaching higher
levels of educational attainment.
Furthermore, community college educators are confronted
with the fact that for the most part, we cannot blame the
students. Some colleges are demonstrating that the gaps can
be closed. The Community College of Denver deserves the
kudos it continues to receive for having turned possibility
into reality. Other colleges now are signing on for the task.
Under Chancellor Irving McPhail?s leadership, The Community
College of Baltimore County conducted an analysis
of student outcomes, including retention and graduation,
which revealed stunning gaps between White and African-
American students. Rather than filing that report quickly
and quietly in the bottom drawer, or talking about all the
reasons they couldn?t do anything about it, college leaders
decided to acknowledge the gap, discuss it openly, and
publicly commit to closing it. They have set goals, established
timelines, identified strategies, and now at least four
other community colleges in Maryland are joining a consortium
to attack the problems together.
There is no more important work in American society
than this work. Furthermore, it may be said with conviction
that to be successful in this work is not just a professional
challenge. It is a moral obligation.
MAKING GOOD ON THE PROMISES
No one ever said that keeping a promise was easy, but
then, an African proverb advises that, ?Smooth seas do not
make skillful sailors.? What is it going to take to make good
on these promises? Truthfully, it is going to take serious,
focused, collaborative, and sustained effort over a considerable
period of time. A handful of inescapably necessary
strategies would include the ones described below:
1. Create Stronger Connections With K-12 Education.
There are many examples of such efforts around the
country. The League?s College and Career Transitions
Initiative currently involves 15 site partnerships across the
U.S. These are community colleges working with high
schools and employers to carve meaningful career pathways
for students. In addition, the middle college model now is
being even more widely adapted to create ?early colleges,?
thanks to significant foundation support, particularly from
the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Beyond those
models, there are other promising efforts, like the Ford
Foundation?s Bridges to Opportunity Initiative; and there
are community colleges like those in the City University of
New York system, where educators have created an astonishing
array of collaborative efforts with the public schools,
from the thousands of high school students who are concurrently
enrolled in college, to the grade school on campus for
the children of welfare moms, to the co-located high school,
to the Diploma Now program, which provides earlymorning
GED preparation classes for high school students
who otherwise would be dropping out. Whatever the model,
the structure, or the form of governance, the clear need is to
How good is good enough?
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create multiple pathways for students both to and through
the community college.
2. Build a New Culture of Evidence in Community Colleges.
For three years, twelve Vanguard Learning Colleges -
already fine institutions - participated in the League?s
Learning College Project, taking on the tough work of
focusing their colleges more powerfully and effectively on
student learning. In the course of that work, it became
evident that the single most powerful lever for change
resided in the second of two questions continuously posed
by Terry O?Banion. The first question is, ?How will this
[decision/action/program/policy] improve and expand
student learning?? And that second, more powerful question
is, ?How do we know??
For a long time, a lot of community college people have
lived reasonably comfortably in a culture of anecdote. Those
anecdotes are important parts of the culture of our institutions,
but by and large, they are stories about the best student
experiences rather than the typical student experiences. So
there is a very important promise that we need to make to
ourselves: We will tell ourselves the truth about what happens
to our students.
To be specific, we will decide what questions need to be
answered about student progress, student attainment, and
student success in our institutions. We will identify the critical
performance indicators that will tell us how we?re doing.
We will collect clear and credible evidence of institutional
performance on those indicators. And we will break down
the data by race and ethnicity, income, gender, and age so
that we will have a genuine understanding of how student
groups may differentially fare in our colleges. Then we will
use the data and our understandings of it to target improvements
in the work we do with students.
The problem here is not that colleges don?t have data.
We have lots and lots of data. The problem is that we usually
don?t ask the right questions of the data, don?t display it in
ways that make sense to most reasonably alert adults, and
therefore don?t see or hear the story that it can tell us about
our students? experiences and the efficacy of our work.
But one of our gravest oversights is that we usually do not
break down the data in ways that will depict the likely reality
of systematic differences in outcomes for different groups of
students. In colleges where people have had the courage to
do this, the first time they disaggregate data, they are almost
inevitably distressed by what they learn.
Pertinent here is the work of Estela Bensimon, who
directs the Diversity Scorecard Project at the University of
Southern California. Bensimon (2004) is addressing this
issue head on, working with 14 two- and four-year colleges
and universities in the Los Angeles area. In general, the
process used in each college is for a cross-functional group
she calls the ?evidence team? to create equity indicators and
benchmarks that comprise the ?diversity scorecard? for the
institution. The premise is that for institutional change to
occur, ?individuals must see, on their own and as clearly as
possible, the magnitude of inequities (awareness). They then
must analyze and integrate the meaning of these inequities
(interpretation), so that they are moved to act upon them
(action)? (p. 46).
This is not just an exercise in collecting data. Bensimon
(2004) and her colleagues ?regard the act of developing
equity indicators and creating the Diversity Scorecard as the
intervention that prompts institutional change? (p.46).
This effect may be witnessed in college after college.
As noted earlier, the problem is rarely a lack of data. The
problem is also rarely a lack of good intentions. By and large,
community college people work in these institutions precisely
because they want to do good work. They want to help
change people?s lives. They want to teach; and they?re both
perplexed and distressed when, as one faculty member said,
?It finally came to me ? the inescapable conclusion that students
just weren?t learning what I thought I was teaching.?
There is nothing particularly easy about building a culture
of evidence. Truth to tell, in the early going, evidence
causes problems. It challenges assumptions and traditions.
It disrupts informal power structures. It threatens the status
quo and suggests needs for change. It comforts the afflicted,
but it afflicts the comfortable.
On the other hand, it also helps chart a course to excellence;
and a collective willingness to insist on, examine, and
use evidence builds the credibility and integrity of community
college work. As a science instructor said: ?I look at it
as polishing chrome versus fixing the engine. For too long,
we?ve been really busy polishing the chrome.?
We will tell ourselves the truth
about what happens to our students.
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3. Provide Effective Remediation.
According to McCabe (2000), 67 percent of high school
students earn a diploma, but only 43 percent of those
students are prepared for college-level work. And 41 percent
of all community college freshmen enroll in remedial classes
(Voorhees, 2000).
One hoped-for solution is to shift remediation to the
high schools, ?where it belongs.? This, of course, is much
to be desired. Right now, though, it is also wishful thinking.
While we need to be hopeful about and supportive of high
school reform, we also must acknowledge that for as far as
we can see into the future, there is going to be a continuing
and critical need for community colleges to be engaged in
a significant amount of remedial education. Contributing
factors are these:
? the slow rate of change in the quality of high schools,
notably in those urban areas where the graduation rates,
particularly for students of color, are much lower than
the averages;
? the continuing influx of immigrants of all ages;
? the average age of community college students (about
29), which means that even if high schools were perfect
tomorrow, the adults who had unsuccessful experiences
there will continue to arrive at the doors of community
colleges for the next decade; and
? the needs of adults more generally, i.e., people coming
from the welfare system, from the criminal justice
system, from low-paying or obsolete occupations, or
those whose jobs have been outsourced to India.
There are too many policymakers and too many educators
who want to believe that the need for remediation is
going to go away and, therefore, that they don?t have to pay
for it, or make policy to support it, or hold institutions
accountable for doing it well, or reward the ones that do.
Effective remediation is a huge bargain. As McCabe
(2000) points out, most students who successfully complete
the prescribed remedial course sequence become productively
employed, 16 percent as professionals, 54 percent in
midlevel, white-collar or technical positions, 20 percent as
high-skill blue-collar workers. Only 9 percent remain in
unskilled or low-skill jobs.
For all of these reasons, the crucial need is for community
colleges to do remedial education both unapologetically
and exceedingly well. The plain truth of the matter is that if
students don?t succeed in developmental education, they
simply won?t have the opportunity to succeed anywhere
else. They won?t take the advanced courses in literature and
history that faculty members love to teach, they won?t graduate,
they won?t transfer, and they won?t land one of those
high-demand, high-wage jobs. On the contrary, they are all
too likely to land on welfare or in jail.
Education or incarceration? That does not seem like a
difficult choice.
It is the level of effective performance in developmental
education that is the legitimate issue. There are some few
colleges that can document doing an exceptional job in
developmental education, working with challenging and
diverse student populations so that participation in developmental
education actually becomes a predictor of student
persistence, graduation, and transfer. That takes away many
of the excuses for poor performance.
On the other hand, of the half million academically
underprepared students who enter community colleges each
year, a substantial portion never make it out of remedial
education, and only half go on to enroll in a baccalaureate
degree program. For students of color, that figure is less than
20 percent (Lumina, 2004).
Sometimes it is necessary to acknowledge that while there
are questions about whether students are ready for college,
there are equally serious questions about whether some of
the colleges committed to open admissions are really ready
for the students.
We can do better.
4. Strengthen Student Engagement in the Community
College Learning Experience.
The research on undergraduate learning is unequivocal
on this point: The more engaged students are, the more
connected ? to one another, to faculty and other college
people, and to the subject matter ? the more they will learn
and the more likely they will be to persist to attainment of
their educational goals.
Results from the Community College Survey of Student
Engagement point to the critical importance of focusing
squarely on the classroom, however it might be defined.
The plain truth of the matter is that if students don?t
succeed in developmental education, they simply won?t have
the opportunity to succeed anywhere else.
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What community college educators can do now to enhance
retention and learning is the purposeful redesign of student
learning experiences. In that redesign process, educators
need to incorporate more of what is now known about effective
educational practice and how students learn.
Thankfully, there is an expanding array of strategies for
teaching and learning that seems to fill the bill: the burgeoning
development of learning communities, as exemplified by
the Seattle Central Community College, La Guardia Community
College, Lane Community College and many others;
the expanding uses of process learning, of culturally mediated
instruction, of project-based learning and service learning.
All of these strategies ? and some others as well ? help to
create what Carol Kasworm (2003) has called ?the connecting
classroom.? She?s not referring to the internet; she?s
talking about approaches that promote connection among
classmates, connections between faculty and students,
connections made between students? lives and work and the
subject matter of the course.
In particular, we need to redesign those gatekeeper
courses. Every college has them ? the high-enrollment
courses that also have high failure rates and mark the end of
many students? college careers. At Richland College in
Dallas, a group of faculty members took a look at student
outcomes for one of their introductory science courses and
didn?t like what they saw. As a consequence, they undertook
a collaborative redesign process. Every college should
consider doing the same. Carol Twigg?s work at the Center
for Academic Transformation offers a terrific collection of
ideas about how to redesign these courses with two objectives
in mind: to increase student learning while also
lowering costs.
There?s an important caveat to this enthusiasm about
innovations in teaching and learning. Pat Hutchings (2004),
in a recent online essay in Carnegie Foundation Perspectives,
reminds us of the Tibetan Buddhists? idea of the ?near
enemy,? the recognition that ?any virtue has a bad cousin.?
The bad cousin in this case ? the downside of these encouraging
developments ? is ?the potential for a kind of insularity
and balkanization, with the various teaching camps each
going their own direction, in isolation from the others.?
This is a pertinent point, because the community college
phenomenon is that we collect innovations. We?re like kids
in Toys ?R? Us: ?Ooh, that?s very cool ? I want one of those.
And this, too. Oh, and I just have to have this because
Sinclair Community College has one!? In another example
of competition among institutions, a dean of a college in a
multicollege district described the intensity of the institution?s
rivalry with another college in the district: ?You
know,? he said, ?if they had a tornado over there, we would
insist on having one, too.?
5. Rethink and Redesign.
If we are to deal with our realities and keep our promises,
we are going to have to rethink some of our most basic
assumptions, question our familiar structures and practices,
and gore some favored oxen. A bit of relevant wisdom,
offered on the menu at the Caf?des Artistes in New York, is
this: ?Tradition is often just a form of conspiracy to keep the
future from happening.?
This redesign effort is the work of transformational
change in our institutions. It is conceptually difficult, politically
dangerous, and demanding of a long-term commitment.
Those who are really committed to it could lose their
jobs. Those who are good at it may never get the credit. It is
best that we learn to think of this as fun. And it is essential
that we think of it as a team sport.
What kinds of tasks might be on this list for change? For
example, colleges will need to
? Focus attention and resources on the ?front door? of the
college. Community colleges lose half of their students in
the first year and untold numbers before the census date
of the first semester. We know that we need to connect
early, connect often. We know that we need to help
students set goals and milestones so that they can see
possibilities, so that they have reasons to come back to
school on Monday, in January, next year.
? Get rid of late registration and other firmly entrenched
institutional practices that are more about revenue
generation, bureaucratic folderol, or faculty convenience
than they are about student learning and success.
It requires continuous acts of courage to
put data in front of an institution and ask hard questions
about what must be learned from it.
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? Remediate our own pervasive but fallacious assumption
that any group of adults will learn a set of knowledge and
skills at the same rate. We have to figure out how to insist
that time will be the variable and learning the constant.
? Create more coherent and rigorous sub-degree certifi-
cates or modules of knowledge and skills, some of them
in general education areas like quantitative reasoning,
writing, and the like, and some linked to emerging career
clusters.
? Become expert in the assessment and certification of
learning, wherever it occurs; this is the growth industry
of the future.
? Develop and employ far more portable mechanisms for
documenting learning, such as smart cards and electronic
portfolios.
? Construct class schedules not as a list of pet courses
taught by individual instructors at their convenience but
of linked learning experiences taught by teams of instructors
and counselors who assume collective responsibility
for a cohort of students.
? Reconfigure staffing to align with commitments to keep
the promises, and to acknowledge that all the forms of
expertise required for the classroom focus on learning
and attainment ? instructional design, content expertise,
curriculum development, technology applications,
multiple teaching strategies, assessment of learning, and
student advising ? may not frequently reside in a single
individual.
6. Exercise Leadership.
This will be done in a lot of different ways and at many
different levels in the college organizations. But this transformational
work is hard, and it certainly will not happen
by itself. It requires continuous acts of courage to put data
in front of an institution and ask hard questions about what
must be learned from it. It requires continuous acts of will to
make and support decisions that put resources where rhetoric
is. And it requires truly relentless focus to avoid all of the
possible diversions, the cool gadgets of educational innovation,
the easier wins ? and to keep all eyes on the Promise.
So keeping the promises will require all of this work and
more. In sum, it?s going to take
? more effective public and policy advocacy;
? tough questions and truth telling;
? rethinking, redefining, redesigning;
? letting go of things that feel comfortable but don?t work;
? scaling up the things that do work; and
? charting a course through the often rough seas of
institutional change.
PROMISES WORTH KEEPING
In a leap year, we get one extra day for Black History
Month, and this year provided that benefit. It is appropriate,
then, to recall the perspective on America?s promise that
was expressed by Martin Luther King, Jr., on the steps of the
Lincoln Memorial in 1963:
When the architects of our republic wrote the
magnificent words of the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence, they were signing a
promissory note to which every American was to
fall heir?. This note was a promise that all men
would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life,
liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
King went on to decry the obvious ? that America had
defaulted on the promise ?insofar as her citizens of color are
concerned,? that America had delivered a check that came
back marked ?insufficient funds.? ?But,? he said, ?We refuse
to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to
believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of
opportunity in this nation.?
And he went on with those famous words: ?No, no, we
are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls
down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.?
Today we acknowledge again, more than 35 years after
Dr. King?s death, that even in a society as powerful and
wealthy as ours, even as good as we think we try to be, there
are people who are not living the American dream. Still there
are young people who do not believe that the dream is their
dream. Still there are people who should be in our colleges
but are not. And there are people who are there now but
won?t achieve their goals. There are promises that have been
broken and promises that just haven?t been kept?yet.
As we contemplate the challenges ahead, it is appropriate
to give thanks.
To the students ? those who learn from us and those who
teach us; those so quick we struggle to keep up and those
who struggle because we move too quickly; those who know
exactly where they?re headed, and those who still believe that
the only reason they?re in college is because someone made a
terrible, wonderful mistake; to those who skip class to care
for a sick child, run to class because the bus was late, or
simply march to a different drummer; to those who
challenge us and those whose courage touches our souls.
To each and every student, we say, ?Thank you.? We are
thankful to know them, even if just a little. And we are
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grateful to them for the opportunity, with their participation
and sacrifice and hard work, to make good on America?s
promise.
To the people of our community colleges ? faculty, staff,
administrators, presidents ? who daily undertake what
should be recognized as some of the most important work in
America, we say, ?Thank you.? If we keep our promises, we
will be indispensably helpful in ensuring that America keeps
hers. We all have promises to keep. And miles to go before
we sleep. And miles to go before we sleep.
Kay McClenney is Director of the Community College Survey of Student
Engagement and Adjunct Professor, Community College Leadership
Program, The University of Texas at Austin.
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Why have community colleges come to play such an
important role in American higher education in a relatively
short amount of time? What will the role of community
colleges be in the next 5 to 10 years? Will more or less
demand be placed on community colleges, and by whom?
This brief will answer these questions by providing a view of
past, current, and future postsecondary enrollment trends in
the United States, with an emphasis on the two-year sector.
Relevant economic and demographic trends will be highlighted
as the brief continually elevates the issue of why we
should not only maintain but improve participation in
community colleges in the future.
THE ROLE OF COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN
AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION
Community colleges have become an integral part of
American postsecondary education, today comprising more
than one-third of total college enrollments. Over the last
30 years, no other sector of higher education has matched
the growth of America?s public two-year institutions. Every
other sector of public and private higher education?s share of
postsecondary enrollment decreased during this same time
period, an unmistakable testament to the rising importance
of public two-year community colleges.
F1. TOTAL FALL HEADCOUNT ENROLLMENT
IN POSTSECONDARY EDUCATION
In millions
The enrollment shifts shown in Figure 1 are rather
dramatic, and the growth in public community college
enrollment mirrors the growth in the number of two-year
institutions. The number of public two-year institutions
rose from 739 in 1969 to 1,069 in 1999 (NCES, 2001a).
Community colleges have come to play such an important
role in the United States for several reasons:
? The two-year sector?s original and continuing role in
educating and training a qualifi ed workforce to meet
economic demands;
? The improvement and growth in the nation?s high school
graduation rates;
? The community college?s commitment to postsecondary
access, which benefi ts individuals and society; and
? Favorable legislative perception regarding the
community college?s responsiveness to state needs.
CURRENT PARTICIPATION AND
FUTURE DEMAND
Community colleges have become a legitimate channel to
education and training in the United States, among
traditional-age, full-time college students as well as part-time
adults. Community colleges have always been regarded as
accommodating to the 25 and over population, but 18- to 24-
year-olds now comprise a slightly larger share of enrollments
(ECS, 2003).
F2. ENROLLMENT IN TWO-YEAR INSTITUTIONS
BY AGE GROUP
Figure 3 shows that the majority of enrollments in
community colleges are still part-time, but there is variation
between the two major age groups.
H I G H A N D R I S I N G : H OW MU C H H I G H E R WI L L
C O L L E G E E N R O L LME N T S G O ?
Mario Martinez { 1 w o r k i n g b r i e f
25+ 18-24
Under 18 and Unknown
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
1965 1975 1985 1995 1998
2-Year
Public 4-Year
Private 4-Year
1.2
2.9
1.8
4.0
5.0
2.2
4.5
5.2
2.5
5.2
5.8
3.0
5.9
5.7
3.1
Note: Data labels rounded to the nearest 100,000.
Source: NCES, 2001a.
5.9%
44.4% 49.7%
Source: USBC, 2002
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 1
F3. TWO-YEAR ENROLLMENT BY ATTENDANCE STATUS
Figures 1, 2, and 3 clearly emphasize the critical role that
two-year institutions play in American higher education
today; however, implementing sound policy to plan for the
future requires a look at future enrollment as well. Current
community college statistics and census population projections
can together produce future two-year enrollment
scenarios to help national leaders initiate policy discussions.
Calculations from recently released state-by-state census
data reveal participation for the year 2000: (a) The national
postsecondary participation rate for 18- to 24-year-olds was
34%, the benchmark (best performing) state?s rate was
47.7%; (b) The national postsecondary participation rate for
25-year-olds and over was 4.5 percent, the benchmark (best performing)
state?s rate was 6.4 percent; and (c) Total postsecondary
participation for all 50 states was 17,349,267 (USBC, 2002).
Future enrollment scenarios can be projected for each
age group by multiplying the age group?s participation rate
by the total population estimate for that age group. This can
be done for each state, with the national total being a sum
of all states. Community colleges currently account for 37.8
percent of total enrollments, so the community college share
of the total national postsecondary enrollment estimate is
easily extracted. Figure 4 shows projected enrollment growth
between 2000 and 2015 for two scenarios: (1) assuming each
state?s participation rates continue at status quo levels for
each age group, and (2) assuming that every state was able to
perform at the benchmark level for each age group.
The community college growth can be disaggregated
by age group, assuming current enrollment by age group
percentages from Figure 2.
Figures 4 and 5 show that community colleges are going
to experience an increase in future demand, even if states
do not improve current participation rates. The scenarios of
Figures 4 and 5 draw on demographic projections by age for
every state; therefore, they account for the changing population.
There is variation among the states, with some states
projected to see an increase in the 18-to-24 population and
others a decrease. Figure 6 shows the population shifts in
fi ve sample states from 2000 to 2015. The national change is
shown in the last column.
Policymakers in California and Massachusetts should
factor in the percentage growth of 18- to 24-year-olds when
formulating future policies to accommodate future demand.
Conversely, Minnesota and Nevada will see a decrease in the
percentage of 18- to 24-year-olds but an increase in the 25 and
over population.
Three general questions emerge from the data presented
thus far:
1. How can states draw on the community college sector
to accommodate increased enrollment demand and
in fact encourage higher participation rates in their
population?
2. How can states plan for physical, technological, or
other resource capacity needs in the community
college sector, given that demand will increase?
3. How will participation be affected if states do not
initiate policy discussions on the fi rst two questions?
100%
80%
60%
40%
20%
0%
Total 18-24 25+
Full-time
Part-time
Total Enrollment
Growth
847,817
3,040,771
18 ? 24
Year-Olds
421,365
1,511,263
25 and Over
376,431
1,350,102
F5. COMMUNITY COLLEGE ENROLLMENT
GROWTH BY AGE GROUP: 2000 TO 2015
Status Quo
Participation
Rates
Benchmark
Participation
Rates
*Total fi gure includes ?18 and under? and ?unknown? categories
F6. PROPORTION OF 18 ? 24 YEAR-OLDS
IN THE GENERAL POPULATION
CA FL MA MN NV Nation
2000 13.7% 10.8% 11.9% 13.0% 12.1% 13.0%
2015 16.0% 10.4% 13.3% 11.8% 10.9% 12.9%
F4. ADDITIONAL ENROLLMENT IN YEAR 2015,
ABOVE 2000 ENROLLMENT LEVELS, FOR THE NATION
Status Quo
Participation
Rates
Benchmark
Participation
Rates
*Total fi gure includes ?18 and under? and ?unknown? categories.
Calculations in Figures 4, 5, 6, and 7 are those used by the author in ECS?s Closing
the College Participation Gap Project.
Additional
Postsecondary
Enrollment
2,242,903
8,044,367
Additional
Community
College
Enrollment
847,817
3,040,771
Percent Growth
in Community
Colleges, Above
2000 Levels
12.9%
46.4%
Source: NCES, 2001b
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
1
THE SPECIAL CASE OF
HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATES
Although planning for the future requires leaders and
policymakers to look far enough ahead to begin laying the
groundwork to accommodate future demand, some trends
are only four to six years out and necessitate an immediate
response. The expected number of high school graduates in
2007 is such a trend. Figure 7 provides information for all 50
states on the projected number of high school graduates and
the likely effect on postsecondary enrollment using the
following information: (a) The college continuation rate, or
the current national rate at which high school graduates
enroll in postsecondary education, is 56.7 percent, the
benchmark state?s rate is 69.4 percent, as calculated by
Mortenson (2002); and (b) The U.S. Department of Labor
(2001) estimates that 33.8 percent of 2000 high school
graduates enrolled in two-year institutions. This percentage
will be applied to future two-year enrollments in 2007.
Scenario 1 assumes that states and the nation as a whole
do nothing to improve the percentage of high school graduates
who move on to postsecondary education. Scenario 2
assumes that high school graduates participate in college
at the benchmark rate. Improvements in enrollment rates
could happen for any number of reasons: better prepared
high school graduates, a decrease in dropout rates, successful
recruiting strategies, and so on. Given any scenario, community
colleges should expect an increase in enrollment from
high school graduates in 2007. Figure 7 is a national total for
the 50 states. There will be variation across states, with some
states seeing major increases and other states actually seeing
decreases in high school graduates in 2007.
PROACTIVELY MEETING THE FUTURE
The future cannot be predicted with absolute accuracy,
but generally enrollment demand for the future will increase.
In the near future, there will be a strong demand from high
school graduates; on to 2015, some states will see an increase
in demand from the 18- to 24-year-old age group, others from
the 25 and older group.
Although the level of resources and infrastructure to meet
future demand is diffi cult to project, it is likely that national
and/or state fi scal investment and innovation, in one form
or another, will have to increase to meet future demand. The
likelihood that two-year institutions will be called upon to
meet hat demand is accentuated by the continuous
rise in the community college share of postsecondary enrollment
and the growing number of traditional-age college
students now entering higher education through the
community college door. Expenditures per student at
community colleges are less than at baccalaureate institutions,
so policymakers will increasingly look to community
colleges to effi ciently meet growing enrollment demands.
The direct linkage state leaders make between community
colleges and economic development will encourage a
continued emphasis on this sector.
If the nation and individual states do not plan for future
enrollment, capacity constraints are likely to challenge the
promise of open access at community colleges. Varying
demographic and economic trends will operate differently
in each state, but without proactive planning, states may
inadvertently begin favoring participation for one age group
over another. If the best-case scenarios are what the nation
and states strive for, then our leaders must come together to
conceive of solutions that will continue to foster innovation
in America?s community colleges.
Mario Martinez is an Associate Professor of Educational Leadership at
the University of Nevada Las Vegas.
REFERENCES
Cohen, M.A. and Brawer, F.B. (1996). The American Community
College. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Mortenson, T. (2002). Chance for College by Age 19. Postsecondary
Education Opportunity for Secondary and College Entry
Characteristics.
National Center for Educational Statistics. (2001a). Table 173: Total
Fall Enrollment in Degree-granting Institutions, by Type and
Control of Institution, 1999.
National Center for Educational Statistics. (2001b). Table 176: Total
Fall Enrollment in Degree-granting Institutions, by Type and Control
of Institution, and Age and Attendance Status of Student, 1999.
Ruppert, S.S. (2001). Where Do We Go From Here: State Legislative
Views on Higher Education in the New Millennium. Report commissioned
by the National Education Association, Washington, DC.
U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2001 April).
College Enrollment and Work Activity of 2000 High School Graduates.
Table 384: College Enrollment and Labor Force Status of
1999 and 2000 High School Graduates, by Sex and Race/Ethnicity:
October 1999 and October 2000.
United States Bureau of the Census (USBC). (2002). Table PCT 24:
Sex by College or Graduate School, Enrollment by Age. Data is
state-by-state for the year 2000. Calculations are those used in
ECS?s Closing the College Participation Gap: State Profi les.
2000-01
Scenario 1: 2006-07
Scenario 2: 2006-07
Total Number of High
School Graduates
2,852,533
3,068,732
3,068,732
Estimated Number of
Graduates to College
1,617,411
1,739,998
2,130,217
Estimated number of
Graduates to
Community College
546,685
588,199
720.013
Community College
Increase over
2000-01 Level
41,434
173,328
Community College
% Increase over
2000-01 Level
7.6%
31.7%
F7. HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATE IMPACT ON COMMUNITY COLLEGE ENROLLMENT
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 2
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
The American community college has long prided itself
on its open admissions policies. Community colleges
welcome not only the high school honor graduate who seeks
an inexpensive local alternative to a state or regional
university, but also the single mother who needs employable
skills to support her family, the mid-career displaced worker
seeking retraining, the professional who holds advanced
degrees but wants specialized training for further development
or promotion, and the high school dropout looking
for another chance. The community college accepts all these
and more, thriving in the creation of a diverse community of
learners, and undeterred by the countless challenges that
accompany widely varied learning needs. Overcoming the
challenges requires a clear picture of the student population,
and this working brief examines the characteristics of
students in two-year public institutions.
Age. Despite the perception that most community college
students are older than the traditional college-going cohort,
almost half of students in public two-year institutions are 18
to 24 years old. With almost a third of the student population
age 30 or older (Knapp et al., 2003), community
colleges must also meet the needs of a sizeable group of
nontraditional-age students.
Gender. Women (57.3%) continue to outnumber men
(42.7%) at public two-year institutions (Knapp et al., 2003),
a trend that has been ongoing since the 1970s and is projected
to continue for the next ten years (Wirt et al., 2004). For
some time, community colleges have had programs focused
on ensuring the success of at-risk women such as displaced
homemakers and single mothers. Similar programs, such as
St. Petersburg College's (FL) Brother-to-Brother initiative,
target the enrollment and persistence of at-risk males.
Race/Ethnicity. Minority students comprise almost onethird
of the student population, with just over 26 percent
of community college students either Black or Hispanic
(NCES, 2003b). In student surveys, minority students report
being more engaged with academic and student services
than their White classmates. At the same time, they also
acknowledge that employment, dependent care, and lack
of academic preparation are ? ?very likely? reasons that they
would drop out of school? (CCSSE, 2003, p. 17).
Language Spoken at Home. Almost 15 percent of
students speak a language other than English in the home,
a characteristic refl ected in the high demand for English as a
Second Language programs in community colleges (NCES,
2003, Table 32-1b).
Family. Nearly 30 percent of community college
students are married, and over one-third have at least one
dependent; more than 16 percent are single parents.
C OMI N G T H R O U G H T H E O P E N D O O R :
A S T U D E N T P R O F I L E
Cynthia D. Wilson { 2w o r k i n g b r i e f
Age
Under 18
18-19
20-21
22-24
25-29
Percentage
Enrollment
5.5%
20.0%
15.9%
12.8%
12.2%
Age
30-34
35-39
40-49
50-64
64 and over
Age unknown
Percentage
Enrollment
8.8%
7.0%
10.1%
4.6%
1.1%
2.0%
F1. ENROLLMENT IN PUBLIC TWO-YEAR
COLLEGES BY AGE, FALL 2001
Source: Knapp et al., 2003
F2. GENDER FACTORS AT TWO-YEAR COLLEGES
Factor
Enrollment
B or better grade average*
Often or very often come to class
unprepared*
Often or very often work harder
than they thought they could to
meet an instructor?s standards*
*student self-reported
Sources: Knapp et al., 2003; CCSSE, 2003
F3. PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION BY
RACE/ETHNICITY, PUBLIC TWO-YEAR INSTITUTIONS
American Indian 1.3%
Asian/Pacifi c Islander 6.1%
Hispanic 12.9%
Black 13.2%
White 66.4%
Source: NCES, 2003b, Table 32-1a
Men
42.7%
66%
20%
42%
Women
57.3%
71%
13%
53%
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 2
Thirty-six percent of students are still listed as dependents
by their parents or guardians, a fi gure consistent with the
increasing traditional-age student presence on community
college campuses (NCES, 2003b, Tables 32-1a, 32-1b; NCES,
1999-2000, Tables 192, 193).
First-Generation Status. Almost half of community
college students have parents who did not attend any
postsecondary institution (see Figure 4). This fi rst-generation
status is an indicator that a student may face particular
challenges, sometimes academic but perhaps social, that
could lead to attrition from the college (Choy, 2002).
Completion of a certifi cate program is more likely to be a
primary educational goal for fi rst-generation students than
is academic attainment, with 38 percent of fi rst-generation
students seeking to transfer while 52 percent of other
students plan to transfer (CCSSE, 2003). Appropriate
support is vital for fi rst-generation students. Since increased
educational attainment is a precursor to increased likelihood
of employment, fi nancial security, and civic engagement,
community colleges have the opportunity to introduce
fi rst-generation students to possibilities they may not
have known existed for them. Colleges would do well to
work closely with these students, helping them achieve their
initial goals while also assisting them in the development of
plans for realizing higher levels of attainment.
Disability. Almost 11 percent of public two-year
college students reported having a disability (10.7 percent),
with 4.9 percent of those reporting learning challenges
(NCES, 2003b, Table 32-1a). Open-admissions community
colleges have philosophical and legal obligations to
provide adaptive services and appropriate learning options
for these students.
Remediation. Community colleges are well aware that
open-admissions policies translate into accepting students
regardless of their level of academic preparation. That 42
percent of community college freshmen enroll in at least one
developmental course is an indication that the open-door
policy is able to fi ll a very real educational access need. Many
of these students spend a year or more in remedial courses, a
signifi cant investment of time and money for students and
colleges alike. Access to college and developmental programs
is not enough to guarantee success, however, so ensuring the
quality of remedial education and academic support is
essential. The reading-intensive nature of much college-level
work, for example, can be a daunting obstacle to students
with limited reading skills. Reading may be the ?most serious
barrier to degree completion [and] is associated with more
total remedial coursework and with lower rates of degree
attainment than other remedial course-taking patterns?
(Wirt et al., 2004, p. 63), a factor that further emphasizes the
need for successful developmental reading programs.
Educational Goals. Almost 85 percent of community
college students have degree or certifi cate completion as a
goal (NCES, 2003a). Underscoring the signifi cance of identifying
educational intent, the Community College Survey of
Student Engagement reported a correlation between
attainment goals and student engagement and success:
...students who identify attainment of a certifi cate,
attainment of an associate degree, or transfer as their
primary educational goal tend to be substantially
more engaged than their non-credential-seeking
counterparts. They also are considerably more likely
to participate in developmental education, study skills
courses, and college orientation; to frequently use an
array of student and academic support services; to
believe those services are important; and to be
satisfi ed with the services they use. Finally, the
credential-seeking students indicate stronger
educational outcomes as a result of their experience
in the college. (CCSSE, 2003, pp. 15-16)
F5. PARTICIPATION IN REMEDIAL EDUCATION BY
SUBJECT AND LENGTH OF TIME ENROLLED, FALL 2000
Subject Area
Reading, Writing, or Mathematics 42%
Reading 20%
Writing 23%
Mathematics 35%
Length of Enrollment
Less than 1 year 37%
1 year 53%
More than 1 year 10%
Source: Wirt et al., 2004
F4. FAMILY RELATIONSHIP CHARACTERISTICS
Marital Status
Not married 69.2%
Married 29.1%
Separated 1.7%
Single Parent 16.4%
Number of Dependents
No dependents 65.5%
One dependent 13.8%
Two or more dependents 20.7%
Dependency Status
Dependent 36.3%
Independent 63.7%
Highest Education Level of Parent(s)
High school or less 45.3%
Some postsecondary education 24.0%
Bachelor?s degree or higher 30.8%
Source: NCES, 2003b, Tables 32-1a, 32-1b; NCES, 1999-2000, Tables 192, 193
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
2
Employment Status. Almost 85 percent of students in
public two-year institutions are employed, 53.8 percent full
time and 30.4 percent part time. Only 15.8 percent do not
have a job (NCES, 2003b). Full-time employment is an indicator
that students are at risk of not achieving their educational
goals, thus challenging community colleges to provide
appropriate scheduling and support for a group that makes
up more than half of the student population.
F7. COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENT EMPLOYMENT
THE MANY FACES OF
THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Community colleges invite all people who are interested
in pursuing postsecondary education to begin, or begin
again, by walking through the open door, a broad invitation
that brings all kinds of learners to the community college
environment. Remediation and fi rst-generation data
indicate that many students in these groups are at risk of not
reaching their educational goals. Almost half of those who
accept the invitation are traditional-age students, but a third
are older and perhaps more apprehensive than their younger
colleagues about returning to school after so many years. A
third of the students are minorities. A third have dependents
who need their time and attention. Most community college
students are either full- or part-time employees. All these
factors contribute to the risk of not completing certifi cate
and degree programs.
Managing such a diverse learning environment requires
attentive planning if the needs of all learners are to be met.
Programs to assist the under prepared, to support the single
parent, to promote diversity, to engage students of all ages,
and to otherwise embrace those who walk through the open
door require adequate resources, thoughtful development,
appropriate implementation, and thorough evaluation. If
we invite these students to join us, then we are obligated
to help them succeed, to do all we can to ensure that they
are welcomed and supported as they work to achieve their
educational goals. If we fulfi ll that obligation, then perhaps
they will accept our future invitations and truly become the
lifelong learners they need to be.
Cynthia D.Wilson is Vice President, Learning and Research, League for
Innovation in the Community College.
REFERENCES
Choy, S. (2002 January). Students Whose Parents Did Not Go to
College: Postsecondary Access, Persistence, and Attainment. (NCES
2001-126). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for
Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Offi ce. Available: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.
asp?pubid=2001126. Accessed June 24, 2004.
Community College Survey of Student Engagement. (2003). Engaging
Community Colleges: National Benchmarks of Quality. 2003
Findings. Austin, TX: Community College Leadership Program,
The University of Texas at Austin.
Knapp, L. G., et al. (2003 December). Enrollment in Postsecondary
Institutions, Fall 2001 and Financial Statistics, Fiscal Year 2001.
(NCES 2004-155). U.S. Department of Education, National Center
for Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government
Printing Offi ce. Available: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.
asp?pubid=2004155. Accessed June 24, 2004.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2003a). The Condition of
Education 2003. (NCES 2003-067). U.S. Department of Education.
Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Offi ce. Available:
http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2003/pdf/19_2003.pdf. Accessed
June 24, 2004.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (2003b).The Condition
of Education. Contexts of Postsecondary Education. Characteristics
of Postsecondary Students. U.S. Department of Education.
Available: http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/2003/section5/indicator32.
asp#info. Accessed June 24, 2004.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (1999-2000). Data
Analysis System. Quick Tables 192, 193, 197, 207. U. S. Department
of Education. Available: http://nces.ed.gov/das/library. Accessed
June 24, 2004.
Wirt, J., Choy, S., Rooney, P., Provasnik, S., Sen, A., and Tabin,
R. (2004, June). The Condition of Education 2004. (NCES
2004-077). U.S. Department of Education, National Center for
Education Statistics. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing
Offi ce. Available: http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.
asp?pubid=2004077. Accessed June 24, 2004.
F6. INITIAL DEGREE GOAL*
Goal Initial goal
Bachelor?s degree 24.8%
Associate?s degree 48.9%
Certifi cate 10.8%
No degree 15.6%
*For all beginning students, 1995-96
Source: NCES, 2003a
Full-time
Part-time Do not work
15.85%
30.4%
53.8%
Source: NCES, 2003b, Table 32-1a
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 3
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
Traditionally, going off to college meant four years in a
residence hall or fi rst apartment for the 18- to 21-year-old.
Few students worked, were married, or had children to care
for, and socializing was at least as important as getting a
degree. Classes started in the fall and ended in the spring,
and the academic year was sprinkled with vacations. This
20th century snapshot has little in common with the streaming
video of the 21st century community college student: ?If
you think words like ?typical? and ?traditional? still have a
relevant ring in today?s community college environment,
consider this: Only one in six undergraduate students in the
U.S. is 18 to 24 years old, attends school full time and lives
on campus? (McClenney, 2002).
Almost six million (40 percent) of America?s college
students are 25 years of age or older. The yellowing photos
of yesterday?s old images are irrelevant, providing a stark
contrast to today?s community college students. By
study ing the students we have now ? most of whom are
nontraditional ? we are better able to sharpen our focus on
the future.
THE NONTRADITIONAL STUDENT
While the traditional student is ?one who earns a high
school diploma, enrolls full time immediately after fi nishing
high school, depends on parents for fi nancial support, and
either does not work or works part time,? the nontraditional
student is fi nancially independent, attends part time, works
full time, delays enrollment after high school, has dependents,
is a single parent, or does not have a high school diploma
(NCES, 2002). In 1999-2000, 89.5 percent of all community
college students were nontraditional.
The Part-Time Student. Even a brief visit with community
college students will sharply focus the differences
between the lives of today?s students and those of the
traditional students of the past. Survey research depicts
students who are very busy and who maintain multiple roles
in their lives: 67 percent are part-time students, a percentage
that has been unchanged for almost 20 years (in four-year
schools, 24 percent attend part time) (Voorhees, 2000).
The Multiple-Role Student. These part-time students are
not idle during their time away from college: 54 percent
work full-time, 34 percent have dependents, 16 percent are
single parents (NCES, 2002), and 29 percent spend more
than 11 hours a week and 17 percent spend more than 30
hours a week caring for dependents. Work and child care are
not alone in taking time and energy. Traveling to campus is
also signifi cant: 93 percent commute to college, and
commuting takes 6 to 20 hours a week for 23 percent of
students. Further, most students are carrying the cost of
college themselves; 56 percent do not receive assistance from
parents for college costs, and 75 percent do not have student
loans (McClenney, 2002).
F1. MULTIPLE-ROLE STUDENTS
Work full time 54%
Have dependents 34%
Are single parents 16%
Commute to college 93%
Receive no fi nancial assistance from parents 56%
Have no student loans 75%
Sources: NCES, 2002; McClenney, 2002
The Working Student. The college experience is more
diffi cult, more stressful, and longer for students who work.
Those who claim to be working students reported that
working limited their class schedule (46 percent), limited
the number of classes they could take (39 percent), limited
the choices of classes (33 percent), and prevented access to
the library (30 percent) (NCES, 2002). And working may
contribute to four alarming fi ndings concerning how
students relate to faculty and to college services. Eighty
percent do not participate in college-sponsored extracurricular
activities. Only a small number of faculty at community
colleges had frequent meetings with their students to
discuss transferring, and only one-third of those faculty had
any information on their student transfer intentions. Fiftyone
percent of part-time students and 39 percent of full-time
students have never discussed ideas from readings or classes
with an instructor outside of class. Forty-fi ve percent of
part-time students never worked with classmates outside
class to prepare assignments (McClenney, 2002).
G O I N G T O C O L L E G E :
N O T WH A T I T U S E D T O B E
Russell E. Hamm { 3w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 3
F2. LIMITATIONS ON WORKING STUDENTS
Work limits class schedule 46%
Work limits number of classes 39%
Work limits choices of classes 33%
Work limits access to library 30%
Source: NCES, 2002
The At-Risk Student. A nontraditional student is a
student at risk. The characteristics that defi ne nontraditional
students are risk factors because they relate negatively to
staying in school or earning a degree. Among students
seeking an associate?s degree, 62 percent of highly nontraditional
students (having three or more nontraditional characteristics)
leave without a degree, compared with 19 percent of
traditional students. Among highly nontraditional students
who sought a bachelor?s degree, only 11 percent obtained
one within fi ve years, compared with 51 percent of traditional
students (NCES, 2002). Colleges must prepare for the
future by providing services to assist nontraditional
students. The Opening Doors study gathered information
using focus groups of community college students or former
students, most of whom were single parents. They listed
what helped them stay in college: stable child care; personal
support from family, peers, and college faculty and staff; and
employers who accommodated school attendance (Matus-
Grossman and Gooden, 2002).
F3. PERSISTENCE TO DEGREE FOR TRADITIONAL
AND NONTRADITIONAL STUDENTS
Highly
Nontraditional Traditional
Students Students
Seek but do not earn associate?s degree 62% 19%
Seek and obtain bachelor?s degree 11% 51%
Source: NCES, 2002
The Dual-Enrollment Student. The small but growing
percentage (less than 3 percent of community college
enrollment) of high school students enrolled in community
colleges creates another cohort requiring the attention of
community college planners. Concurrent enrollment
enables high school students to get college credit prior to
attaining a diploma. There exists no estimate of the number
or percentage of the current 5.7 million two-year students
who are dual enrollers, but Utah reports about 17,000
annually; Minnesota estimates 8,000; Virginia about 7,000;
and New York City more than 12,000.
The Goal-Setting Student. The good news is that 76 million
adults are enrolled in formal learning, with more than
half in work-related learning (Voorhees and Lingenfelter,
2003). Today?s nontraditional student sets multiple goals
and is savvy about using higher education to achieve them.
Adults 25 years and older who seek education for various
reasons have replaced the notion that kids go to college to
get a degree. Students claim they attend college to obtain
knowledge in a specifi c area (59 percent), obtain a degree
(58 percent), transfer to a four-year institution (58 percent),
obtain job-related skills (54 percent), complete a certifi cate
(32 percent), update job skills (28 percent), change careers
(23 percent), or take courses for self-improvement (22 percent)
(McClenney, 2002).
F4. REASONS ADULTS 25 AND OLDER ATTEND COLLEGE
Obtain specifi c knowledge 59%
Obtain a degree 58%
Transfer to baccalaureate institution 58%
Obtain job-related skills 54%
Complete a certifi cate 32%
Update job skills 28%
Change careers 23%
Self-improvement 22%
Source: McClenney, 2002
IT?S ABOUT A JOB ? AND WHAT THEY
THINK ABOUT THE JOB
Preparing for a job and managing a career compete
strongly with getting a degree, and factors surrounding
students and their work may alter community college practice
in dealing with working students. Although 32 percent
of all undergraduates do not work, 48 percent report that
they work to be able to go to school. Distinct from working
students are the 20 percent who see themselves as employees
seeking education (Hudson and Hurst, 2002).
F5. UNDERGRADUATE PERCEPTIONS OF THEIR
RELATIONSHIP TO WORK
Students who work to support their education 48%
Students who are employees seeking education or skills training 20%
Students who do not work 32%
Source: Hudson and Hurst, 2002
Research indicates that the differing perceptions between
students who also work and employees who also attend college
cause differing behaviors as students make academic choices:
? Employees are more likely?to have fi rst enrolled in a
two-year institution and less likely?to have fi rst enrolled
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
3
in a four-year institution (73 percent of this group selects
community colleges fi rst).
? 78 percent of employee students are seeking a certifi cate,
an associate degree, or no degree; only one in fi ve wants a
baccalaureate degree.
? ?Employees?are less likely than ?working students? ? to
persist in school and are more likely to drop out.
? In short, for a variety of reasons, employees appear to be
a group of postsecondary students who are particularly at
risk for not persisting (Hudson and Hurst, 2002).
FURTHER CHALLENGES
Beyond the pressures of full lives, many community
college students carry added burdens onto campus. Some
of the 40 million Americans reportedly functioning at the
lowest literacy levels become community college students,
presenting a challenge to the typical community college.
Moreover, since the passage of the Personal Responsibility
and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, increasing
numbers of current and former welfare recipients have been
joining the low-wage workforce. They go to community
college to upgrade skills but are often not college ready.
Many students have a devilishly uphill climb:
? 67 percent of high school students earn a diploma, but
only 43 percent are prepared for college-level work
(McCabe, 2000).
? 41 percent of all community college freshmen enroll in
remedial classes (Voorhees, 2000).
? 60 percent of community college students are minority students
whose attrition rate is 60 to 80 percent (Nora, n.d.).
? The community college serves a higher proportion of
students with disabilities, and the largest category is
learning disabilities (Voorhees, 2000).
? Remediation classes are offered in 100 percent of
community colleges (NCES, 1996b).
? Only one in four (26.7 percent) completes the associate
degree being sought (NCES, 1996a).
Beyond the moral obligation to help students are practical
economic questions: Is the community college investment
in remedial education good for economic development? Is it
good for the local community? Indeed it is, for students who
are successfully remediated become productively employed.
Almost 16 percent become professionals; 54 percent obtain
midlevel, white-collar, or technical positions; 20 percent
become high-skill blue-collar workers; and only 9 percent
remain in unskilled or low-skill jobs (McCabe, 2000).
F6. POSITIONS ATTAINED BY
SUCCESSFULLY REMEDIATED STUDENTS
Professional 16%
Midlevel, white collar, or technical 54%
High-skill blue-collar 20%
Unskilled or low-skill 9%
Source: McCabe, 2000
THE COMPETITORS
Although community colleges are inexpensive and
otherwise accessible, students may go elsewhere based
on a perception that other postsecondary experiences are
faster or more effective. Four-year colleges and universities
compete directly with community colleges, but no data has
been found to quantify numbers of students who are enticed
away. Rather than taking this more traditionally academic
route, some students seek institutions focused primarily on
job skills. For-profi t institutions and business and industry
training are two options that capitalize on the get-a-job
desire among students.
For-Profi t Institutions. These institutions fall into three
categories: (1) Local enterprise colleges have one or several
campuses and are regional, privately owned, and typically
enroll fewer than 500 students (e.g., Potomac College,
Washington, DC); (2) Super-system organizations are
multicampus and multistate and are traded on the New
York Stock Exchange (e.g., The University of Phoenix,
DeVry University, and ITT Technical Institute); and (3)
Internet institutions use the internet exclusively and have
no campuses (e.g., Jones International University) (Kelly,
2001 July).
Twenty-eight percent of all two-year degree-granting
institutions are for-profi ts (NCES, 1999). They awarded 10
percent of all associate degrees, and their share of the twoyear
college market is 28 percent, up from 19 percent in a
decade (Kelly, 2001 August). Students choose the for-profi t
sector because ?they like the convenience, the schedules
and calendars designed for them, and the services. They
want to learn the skills to get a job without having to take
courses they think are irrelevant? (Kelly, 2001 July). The
for-profi ts are doing something right in the eyes of students,
who are willing to pay far more to attend them. Indeed, the
net tuition (published tuition minus fi nancial aid) is about
$4,000 higher at the two-year for-profi t (Bailey, Badway, and
Gumport, 2001).
Business and Industry Training and Corporate
Universities. Business and industry training also competes
with community colleges. The well-documented skills
shortages in business, especially high-tech business, have led
to the rapid growth of industry-based training, particularly
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 3
in the alternative training arena. ?When community colleges
are not fast or fl exible enough to offer courses that business
or industry needs, they will fi nd a way to train them in house
or through consultant services? (OCCRL, 2000). While the
number of students drawn away from the college by this
training has not been determined, it is fair to conclude that
much business and industry training is not the business of
the colleges. The training is often specifi c to a business
application, and developing a college course is not necessarily
perceived by the college as a good investment.
Corporate universities may be the more serious competitors.
?A corporate university is a portal within a company
through which all education takes place, an organization?s
strategic hub for educating employees, customers, and
suppliers...and (linking) an organization?s strategies to the
learning goals of its audiences? (Talisayon, 2001). Corporate
universities number in excess of 2,000 in the U.S., and many
offer sanctioned two- and four-year degrees. Best known
is Motorola University, which has 400 full-time faculty and
800 part-time specialists at 99 sites in more than 20 countries,
serving 100,000 students a year (Talisayon, 2001).
FedX University, Intel University, Sprint University, Disney
University, Oracle University, and University of Toyota
are additional examples. There is good news in this fi eld:
Valencia Community College (FL) and Mott Community
College (MI) have fl ourishing educational partnerships
with corporate universities (Walt Disney World and Ford
Motor Corporation, respectively). In fact, about two-thirds
of corporate universities have alliances with colleges and
universities.
Online and Alternative Learning. Online education is
not a competitor to community colleges itself but is a delivery
mode that, used by a competitor, does take students. In
its second survey of distance education programs, the U.S.
Department of Education found that 1,680 colleges and
universities offered a total of about 54,000 online education
courses in 1998, with 1.6 million students enrolled. Seventytwo
percent of public two-year institutions offered distance
education courses (Carnevale, 2000). Over all, about 7.6
percent of students taking college courses during the 1999-
2000 academic year did so through distance education
(Carnevale, 2002).
Research confi rms that online and alternative education
produce learning results equivalent to class-based learning.
Of particular note, however, is the value of online delivery
in meeting the needs of the nontraditional student. For
example, the U.S. Department of Education has released a
study showing that older women with families and jobs were
more drawn to undergraduate distance education programs
during the 1999-2000 academic year than were members of
other groups (Carnevale, 2002).
Online delivery offers opportunities to tailor courses to
individual learners, to styles of learning, and to methods that
engage learners. It also has the potential to strengthen oncampus
learning: ?What?s ahead for most faculty and most
students is some kind of hybrid learning experience in which
technology supplements, not supplants, both the content
and the discourse that have been part of the traditional experience
of going to college? (Continuing Challenge, 1999).
Online learning also offers a manageable way for colleges
to collaborate and compete more effectively. For example,
the Colorado Commission on Higher Education has
approved a plan for its public colleges and universities to
develop online courses jointly and to share them in an effort
to keep the state?s distance education programs locally and
nationally competitive. The 28 state institutions will collaborate
in developing a catalog of all of their online courses and
in creating reciprocity agreements. Students will be able to
take courses from any of the institutions and accumulate
credit in the colleges in which they are enrolled; the courses
will be transferable among all of Colorado?s institutions
(Carnevale, 2001).
PATCHING TOGETHER A COLLEGE
EXPERIENCE IN A CHANGING
EDUCATIONAL MARKETPLACE
Students exercise choice among institutions as they
assemble the training and education they require. They drop
in, drop out, stop out, or attend more than one institution,
a phenomenon often referred to as swirling. Although many
students attend a single college, other students have different
experiences. For example, 33 percent of students started at
another institution, 12 percent have already earned a degree,
and 11 percent are taking courses concurrently at another
To remain competitive, community colleges
must do more than offer a low-cost alternative
in postsecondary education.
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
3
institution (Adelman cited in McClenney, 2002). To remain
competitive, community colleges must do more than offer a
low-cost alternative in postsecondary education. They must
also position themselves to meet the many, diverse needs
of the wide variety of students who seek an assortment of
credentials from these institutions.
Russell Hamm is a consultant on workforce development issues. He is
a former senior community college administrator and offi cial with the
U.S. Department of Labor?s Employment and Training Administration.
REFERENCES
Bailey, T., Badway, N., and Gumport, P. J. (2001). For-Profi t Higher
Education and Community Colleges. National Center for Postsecondary
Improvement. Stanford, CA: Stanford University.
Carnevale, D. (2000 January 7). Survey Finds 72% Rise in Number of
Distance-Education Programs. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Carnevale, D. (2001 January 26). Colorado?s Public Institutions Will
Cooperate in Distance Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Carnevale, D. (2002 November 8). Distance Education Attracts Older
Women Who Have Families and Jobs, Study Finds. The Chronicle
of Higher Education.
College Is Possible. The Coalition of America?s Colleges and Universities.
http://www.collegeispossible.org/adults/adults_myths.htm.
The Continuing Challenge of Instructional Integration and User Support.
(1999). The 1999 National Survey of Information Technology
in U.S. Higher Education. Encino, CA: The Campus Computing
Project.
Hudson, L., and Hurst, D. (2002 Spring). The Persistence of Employees
Who Pursue Postsecondary Study. NCES Quarterly.
Kelly, K. F. (2001 July). Meeting Needs and Making Profi ts: The Rise
of For-Profi t Degree-Granting Institutions. Denver: Education
Commission of the States.
Kelly, K. F. (2001 August). The Rise of For-Profi t Degree-Granting
Institutions: Policy Considerations for States. Denver: Education
Commission of the States.
Matus-Grossman, L., and Gooden, S. (2002 December). Student?s
Perspectives on Juggling Work, Family, and College. Leadership
Abstracts. Phoenix: League for Innovation in the Community
College.
McCabe, R. H. (2000). No One to Waste: A Report to Public Decision
Makers and Community College Leaders. Washington, DC:
Community College Press.
McClenney, K. (2002). Engaging Community Colleges: A First Look.
Community College Survey of Student Engagement. Community
College Leadership Program, The University of Texas at Austin.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (1996a). Beginning
Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study, Second follow-up.
Data from U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (1996b). Remedial
Education at Higher Education Institutions in Fall 1995.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (1999). Students at
Private, For-Profi t Institutions. NCES 2000-175.
National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (2002). Special
Analysis: Nontraditional Undergraduates. The Condition of
Education 2002.
Nora, A. (n.d.). Reexamining the Community College Mission.
American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) website,
www.aacc.nche.edu/Content/NavigationMenu/ResourceCenter/
Projects_Partnerships/Current/NewExpeditions/IssuePapers/Reex.
Offi ce of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL).
(2000 Fall). Focus on Leadership: An Interview with Debra Daniels.
The University of Illinois.
Talisayon, S. (2001 June 11). Knowledge Works 5. i.t.matters. http://
www.itmatters.com.ph/column/talisayon_06112001.html
Voorhees, R. (2000). Financing Community Colleges for a New Century.
In Paulsen, M. and Smart, J. (Eds.), The Finance of Higher Education:
Theory, Research, Policy and Practice. Agathon Press, 2000.
Voorhees, R., and Lingenfelter, P. E. (2003 February). Adult Learners
and State Policy. SHEEO and CAEL.
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
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w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
If the past two decades are an indication of the future of
federal and state higher education policy, then several trends
will continue to shape access to postsecondary education in
the 21st century: (a) Federal fi nancial aid will grow, but primarily
in the form of student loans; (b) State appropriations
will grow, but become a smaller share of general and educational
expenditures; (c) Tuition and fees, as well as the total
price for college, will increase faster than infl ation and faster
than family median income; and (d) State student fi nancial
aid will grow, but the trend toward merit-based aid rather
than need-based aid will continue.
These trends have contributed to increasing opportunity
gaps among students from different race, ethnic, and class
backgrounds (Price, 2004; Price and Wohlford, 2003).
The trend of a widening access and attainment gap is
especially troubling because most of the increase in the traditional
college-age population during the next decade will
consist of students of color and students from lowincome
homes. According to U.S. Census Bureau projections,
between 2003 and 2010, 75 percent of the growth in
the 18- to 24-year-old resident population will be persons of
color. Persons of color tend to be proportionately overrepresented
among lower-income groups. For example, the U.S.
Census Current Population Survey (March 2002) indicates
that 50 percent of Hispanic households and 55 percent of
Black households had incomes in the lowest two quintiles of
all households, yet Black and Hispanic households made
up only 23 percent of all households. On the other hand,
signifi cantly fewer White households (37 percent) had
incomes in the lowest two quintiles of all households despite
making up about two-thirds of all households.
The community college remains the institution of choice
for students of color and for students from less-affl uent
family backgrounds. In fact, the tradition of open access at
America?s community colleges provides opportunity for
students who traditionally did not participate in postsecondary
education (Michelau, 2003). According to the National
Center for Education Statistics (2003a), 88 percent of the 206
public two- and four-year colleges and universities that have
50 percent or more minority enrollment are community
colleges. Similarly, in 1999-2000, 55 percent of dependent
students from families with incomes below $30,000 and 65
percent of adult students with incomes below $20,000 were
enrolled in community colleges as fi rst-year undergraduates
(Cunningham, 2002).
Given the traditional role of community college as the
gateway to postsecondary education credentials for students
of color and low-income students, these demographic
projections and state and federal policy trends point to
particular challenges for community colleges in the next
century. That is, how can the community college continue
to expand access to students from underserved populations
and increase the success of those students while maintaining
the fl exibility to respond to the local needs of government,
industry, and the community of residents it serves? Defi ning
the access and attainment gaps is a necessary fi rst step
toward aligning federal, state, and institutional policies with
the needs of community college students.
WHERE ARE THE GAPS?
The research on postsecondary access and success
clearly shows that low-income students and students of
color participate in college at lower rates; are less academically
prepared and thus require remedial or developmental
education; are averse to student loans and unlikely to qualify
for merit aid; and are less likely to persist, transfer to a fouryear
college, or attain a postsecondary degree.
Academic Preparation. Low-income students and
students of color overwhelmingly attend secondary schools
with signifi cantly fewer resources than wealthier, predominantly
White suburban schools (Frankenberg and Lee, 2002;
NCES, 1998). One of the consequences of this variability of
resources for primary and secondary schools is academic
preparation. In 2000, only one in five high school graduates
from families with income less than $25,000 was highly or
very highly qualifi ed for college based upon secondary
school curriculum, compared with more than half of high
school graduates from families with income greater than
$75,000 (NCES, 2000).
Participation Rates. According to the US Census
Bureau, 39 percent of all White 18- to 24-year-olds were enrolled
in a degree-granting institution in 1999. The comparable
rates for African Americans and Hispanics were
30 percent and 19 percent, respectively. In 2000, almost 50
percent of high school completers from low-income families
D E F I N I N G T H E G A P S : A C C E S S A N D S U C C E S S A T
AME R I C A ? S C OMMU N I T Y C O L L E G E S
Derek V. Price { 4w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 4
enrolled in college immediately after fi nishing high school
compared with 77 percent of high school completers from
high-income families (NCES, 2003b). A similar gap is present
among students from different race and ethnic backgrounds:
66 percent of White high school completers immediately
enrolled in college compared with 56 percent and
49 percent of Black and Hispanic high school completers,
respectively (NCES, 2003b).
Financial Aid. Low-income students and students of
color are sensitive to the type of fi nancial aid available.
For example, students of color and low-income students
perceive student borrowing as limiting their college choices.
Forty-one percent of low-income borrowers felt loans limited
their college choices; among different race and ethnic
groups, a larger proportion of Black (44 percent) and Hispanic
(51 percent) borrowers felt loans limited their college
choices compared with White (35 percent) borrowers (Baum
and O?Malley, 2003). In addition, low-income students and
students of color are less likely to qualify for merit-based
fi nancial aid, which tends to fl ow to higher income and more
affl uent White students (Heller and Marin, 2002; Price, 2001;
Heller and Nelson Laird, 1999). In 1999-2000, the average
need-based federal grant for full-time, full-year students was
$2,524 (including Pell and SEOG), which covered only 49
percent of the total price of attendance at community colleges
and less than 30 percent of tuition, room, and board at
public four-year institutions (NCES, 2003a).
Remedial Education. Estimates of the proportion of
community college students in need of developmental
education ranges, conservatively, between 25 percent and 50
percent, but could be as high as 75 percent (Grubb, 2001).
Among 1992 high school graduates who fi rst enrolled in
community college, 44 percent scored at the lowest level or
below on reading profi ciency, and 30 percent scored at the
lowest level or below on math profi ciency (NCES, 2003c).
According to The Institute for Higher Education Policy
(2002), all community colleges offered remedial education
courses by 1995, a fact unlikely to change, given the variety of
students who enroll in community colleges.
Persistence and Attainment. Of students who initially
enrolled in community college in 1995-1996, 35 percent
attained a certifi cate or degree within six years (NCES,
2003c). This percentage varies considerably by race and
ethnicity; only 26 percent of Blacks and 29 percent of
Hispanics attained a degree or certifi cate within six years,
compared with 38 percent of Whites and 39 percent of
Asians (NCES, 2003c). When compared with degree and
certifi cate attainment rates for students who initially enroll
at public four-year institutions (60 percent after six years),
it appears that community college students are less likely to
persist to a degree (NCES, 2003d).
Transfer and Bachelor?s Degree Attainment. According
to the National Center for Education Statistics (2001), only
one in four students initially enrolled in community college
in 1989 transferred to a four-year college by 1994; however,
among community college students who expected to
complete a bachelor?s degree, 36 percent transferred to a
four-year college or university. Among students who began
their postsecondary education in 1995-1996 at community
college and expected to earn a bachelor?s degree, 51 percent
of students transferred to a four-year institution within six
years, and 23 percent attained a degree (NCES, 2003c; NCES,
2003d). By comparison, 57 percent of students who initially
enrolled in four-year institutions in 1995-1996 and expected
to earn a bachelor?s degree attained a degree within six years
(NCES, 2003d).
These data indicate that community colleges serve a
diverse student population, many of whom aspire to a
postsecondary education credential. Although students who
attend community colleges can be successful, they face diffi -
cult challenges, including academic underpreparedness, high
fi nancial need, and competing work and family obligations.
COMMUNITY COLLEGE STUDENTS AT RISK
According to the U.S. Department of Education, students
with characteristics known to adversely affect persistence
and attainment are at risk of not succeeding in college. These
characteristics are (1) delayed postsecondary enrollment, (2)
high school dropout or GED recipient, (3) part-time enrollment,
(4) fi nancial independence, (5) having dependents
other than spouse, (6) single-parent status, and (7) working
full-time while enrolled (see NCES, 2003c). More than 70
percent of students who fi rst enrolled in community colleges
had at least one risk factor, and more than 50 percent had two
or more risk factors (NCES, 2003c). In contrast, 72 percent
F.1 PERCEPTION THAT LOANS LIMIT
COLLEGE CHOICES, BY RACE/ETHNICITY
Hispanic 51%
Black 44%
White 35%
F.2 PERSISTENCE TO CERTIFICATE OR DEGREE OVER
SIX-YEAR PERIOD, BY RACE/ETHNICITY
Black 26%
Hispanic 29%
White 38%
Asian 39%
Source: NCES, 2003d
Source: Baum and O?Malley, 2003
w o r k i n g b r i e f
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4
of students who fi rst enrolled at public four-year institutions
(and 80 percent who began at private four-year colleges)
had no risk factors (NCES, 2003c). Figure 3 illustrates this
stark dichotomy between community colleges and four-year
institutions based on these seven risk factors:
F.3 PERCENTAGE DISTRIBUTION OF
STUDENTS BY RISK FACTOR AND TYPE OF INSTITUTION
Delayed Enrollment
GED/HS dropout
Part-Time Attendance
Financial Independence
One or More Children
Single-Parent
Worked Full-Time
Source: NCES, 2003c
Among all 1995-1996 beginning postsecondary students
with two or three risk factors, 36 percent earned a degree
or certifi cate within six years. By comparison, less than
25 percent of students with two or three risk factors who
initially enrolled at a community college earned a degree or
certifi cate within six years. Because community colleges are
the primary postsecondary access point for at-risk students,
low-income students, and students of color, how can they
better serve these populations? And how can state and
federal policymakers help community colleges better serve
these students?
NEED FOR CHANGE
The data on access and attainment gaps for community
college students indicate that institutional policies and
state and federal postsecondary education policies need to
change. Community college leaders and state policymakers
should be asking a number of questions about issues and
challenges that have led to the widening gaps in academic
preparation, college participation, and educational attainment,
and these issues must be considered in the broader
context of demographic shifts and changing student needs.
If community colleges are to continue providing educational
opportunities for all Americans, policymakers and community
college leaders must assess the needs of their communities
and craft policies that close the access and attainment
gaps in their states.
Derek V. Price is a higher education consultant in Indianapolis, IN
and author of the book, Borrowing Inequality: Race, Class and
Student Loans.
REFERENCES
Baum, S., and O?Malley, M. (2003). College on Credit: How Borrowers
Perceive Their Education Debt. Braintree, MA: Nellie Mae.
Federico Cunningham, A. (2002). The Policy of Choice: Expanding
Student Options in Higher Education. Washington, DC: The Institute
for Higher Education Policy.
Frankenberg, E., and Lee, C. (2002 August). Race in American Public
Schools: Rapidly Resegregating School Districts. Cambridge, MA:
The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University.
Grubb, W. N. (2001 February). From Black Box To Pandora?s Box:
Evaluating Remedial/Developmental Education. CCRC Brief 11.
New York: Community College Research Center, Teachers College,
Columbia University.
Heller, D.E., and Marin, P., Eds. (2002 August). Who Should We Help:
The Negative Social Consequences of Merit Scholarships. Cambridge,
MA: The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University.
Heller, D.E., and Nelson Laird, T. F. (1999). Institutional Need-based
and Non-need Grants: Trends and Differences Among College and
University Sectors. Journal of Student Financial Aid, 29(3): 7-24.
The Institute for Higher Education Policy. (2002). Developmental
Education and College Opportunity in New England. Washington,
DC: Author.
Michelau, D. K. (2003). Tuition and Fees Policies in the Nation?s Public
Community Colleges. Boulder, CO: Western Interstate Commission
for Higher Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2003a). Digest of Education
Statistics 2002. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2003b). The Condition of
Education 2002. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2003c). Community College
Student: Goals, Academic Preparation, and Outcomes. Washington,
DC: U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2003d). Descriptive Summary
of 1995-96 Beginning Postsecondary Students: Six Years Later.
Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2001). Community College
Transfer Rates to 4-Year Institutions Using Alternative Defi nitions of
Transfer. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (2000). The Condition of
Education 2000. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.
National Center for Education Statistics. (1998). Inequalities in Public
School District Revenues. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of
Education.
Price, D.V. (2004). Borrowing Inequality: Race, Class and Student
Loans. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers.
Price D. V. and Wohlford, J. K. (2003 August). Race, Ethnic and Gender
Inequality in Educational Attainment: A Fifty-State Analysis,
1960-2000. Paper presented at The Harvard Color Lines Conference,
The Civil Rights Project, Harvard University.
Price, D.V. (2001). Merit Aid and Inequality: Evidence from Baccalaureate
& Beyond. Journal of Student Financial Aid, 31(2).
U.S. Census Bureau. (2000). 2000 Census of the United States.
U.S. Census Bureau. (2002 March). Current Population Survey.
Public
Two-year
45.6
12.1
47.4
34.5
20.6
10.0
35.1
Public
Four-year
18.0
1.8
11.2
8.1
4.2
2.4
10.5
Private
Four-year
13.0
2.5
5.7
6.7
2.9
1.5
8.4
At-Risk Factors for
Beginning Students
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 5
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
In today?s economy, access to postsecondary education
or training has become the threshold requirement for individual
career success. And successful business organizations
now depend on employees with at least some education
or training beyond high school. The increasing economic
value of a postsecondary education is good news in a society
that strives to make economic opportunity subservient to
individual merit, rather than family background. Unlike
the European welfare states that guarantee access to income
and benefi ts irrespective of individual educational performance,
our increasing reliance on education as the arbiter
of economic opportunity allows us to expand opportunity
without surrendering individual responsibility. As a result,
we emphasize equality of educational opportunity rather
than equality of economic outcomes.
But higher education is different from other economic
commodities. Postsecondary education is about more than
dollars and cents. It does more than provide foot soldiers for
the American economy. College educators also have cultural
and political missions to ensure that there is an educated
citizenry that can continue to defend and promote our
democratic ideals. Nevertheless, the inescapable reality is that
ours is a society based on work. Those who are not equipped
with the knowledge and skills necessary to get, and keep, good
jobs are denied full social inclusion and tend to drop out of
the mainstream culture, polity, and economy. In the worst
cases, they are drawn into alternative cultures, political
movements, and economic activities that are a threat to
mainstream American life. Hence, if postsecondary educators
cannot fulfi ll their economic mission to help youths and
adults become successful workers, they also will fail in their
cultural and political missions to create good neighbors and
good citizens.
EDUCATION FOR THE
KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY
The economic pressure for increasing access to education
has been building over the past half century. The economic
value of human capital has accelerated, and skill requirements
on the job have increased markedly since the end of
World War II, constantly upping the ante on education and
training for good jobs.1
As the 21st century begins, America?s ability to produce
and disseminate education will increasingly determine its
economic competitiveness as the country shifts from an
industrial to an information economy. Education facilitates
the current transition in two ways. First, the initial stock of
education in individual nations determines growth potential
in the new information economy. Low levels of education
stocks make it diffi cult to implement complex growthinducing
technologies and productivity-enhancing practices
(Rosenzweig, 2000). Countries whose populations have high
levels of education are fertile soil for new technology and
productive institutional changes (Romer, 1990). Second,
increases in a country?s overall level of educational attainment
cause corresponding increases in their overall rate of
economic growth. Increasing a country?s average level of
schooling by one year can increase economic growth
by about 5 to 15 percent (Krueger and Lindahl, 1999;
Topel, 1998).2
The fastest-growing and best-paying jobs have been those
that require at least some college (see Figure 1).3 Currently,
almost 6 in 10 jobs are held by workers with at least some
postsecondary education or training, compared with 2 in
10 in 1959 (see Figures 2-5).
The kind of education and skill demanded also has
changed as a result of the shift to a service- and information-
WH Y L E A R N I N G ? T H E V A L U E O F H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N
T O S O C I E T Y A N D T H E I N D I V I D U A L
Anthony P. Carnevale and Donna M. Desrochers 5w o r k i n g b r i e f {
Increasing a country?s average level of schooling by one year
can increase economic growth by about 5 to 15 percent.
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 5
F4. DISTRIBUTION OF EDUCATION IN TECHNOLOGY JOBS,
1973 AND 2000
Percent of prime age (30-59) employment. Earnings in 2000 dollars.
Graduate Degree, $71,400
Bachelor?s Degree,
$62,700
Some College, $43,200
High School Graduates,
$37,200
1% High School Dropouts, $31,500
17%
15%
36%
13%
18%
Associate?s Degree, $43,300
1973
2000
Graduate Degree, $69,500
High School
Graduates, $43,700
6%
17%
25%
31%
21%
High School Dropouts, $34,800
Some College, $49,000
Bachelor?s Degree,
$63,700
Source: Authors? Analysis of Current Population Survey (March 1974 & 2000).
F2. DISTRIBUTION OF EDUCATION IN OFFICE JOBS,
1973 AND 2000
Percent of prime age (30-59) employment. Earnings in 2000 dollars.
Graduate Degree, $77,100
Bachelor?s Degree,
$58,700
Some College, $38,900
High School
Graduates, $31,100
High School Dropouts, $23,700
12%
10%
26% 27%
21%
4%
Associate?s Degree, $38,900
1973
2000
Graduate Degree, $63,500
High School
Graduates, $33,300
8%
12%
18%
15%
47%
High School Dropouts,
$29,600
Some College,
$43,000
Bachelor?s Degree,
$60,200
Source: Authors? Analysis of Current Population Survey (March 1974 & 2000).
F1. DISTRIBUTION OF EDUCATION IN JOBS, 1973 AND 2000
Percent of prime age (30-59) employment. Earnings in 2000 dollars.
Graduate Degree, $56,300
Bachelor?s Degree,
$49,600
Some College,
$39,000
High School
Graduates, $31,100
High School
Dropouts, $25,200 7%
9%
12%
32%
40%
Graduate Degree, $68,300
Bachelor?s Degree,
$51,200
Some College, $35,600
High School
Graduates, $28,600
High School Dropouts, $20,100
11%
10%
20%
32%
18%
9%
Associate?s Degree,
$36,500
1973
2000
Source: Authors? Analysis of Current Population Survey (March 1974 & 2000).
F3. DISTRIBUTION OF EDUCATION IN
EDUCATION AND HEALTH CARE JOBS, 1973 AND 2000
Percent of prime age (30-59) employment. Earnings in 2000 dollars.
Graduate Degree, $61,600
Bachelor?s Degree,
$35,700 Some College, $29,300
High School
Graduates, $22,400
High School Dropouts, $15,100
24%
13%
24%
20%
14%
5%
Associate?s Degree, $32,900
1973
2000
Graduate Degree, $49,900
High School
Graduates, $25,500
21%
16%
13%
19%
31%
High School Dropouts,
$19,300
Some College, $27,800
Bachelor?s Degree,
$32,500
Source: Authors? Analysis of Current Population Survey (March 1974 & 2000).
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
5
based economy. Skill requirements have expanded to
include soft skills, such as problem-solving and interpersonal
skills, that supplement the more narrow cognitive and
occupational skills sought in the industrial economy.
Attitudinal skills, such as a positive ?cognitive style,? also
are growing in importance because they allow workers to
cope with the accelerating pace of change in the workplace.
LEARNING AND EARNING
Increasing skill requirements are benefi cial for the
most educated and skilled workers, but they are ever more
problematic for the least educated and skilled. As the United
States has increasingly turned to workers with at least some
college or postsecondary training to fulfi ll a wide variety of
labor-market slots, the least educated workers have been left
with few opportunities to access good-paying jobs. Since
the 1980s, the real infl ation-adjusted earnings of male high
school graduates and dropouts have declined precipitously,
while the earnings of college-educated workers have
increased (see Figure 6).
Among women, earnings are rising because of increased
labor force participation rates and because the service- and
information-based economy is more accessible than was the
industrial economy. However, as with men, the earnings gap
has increased substantially between college-educated women
and those with a high school diploma or less. Overall, the
wage premium for experienced college-educated workers,
compared with high school educated workers, has increased
from about 43 to 73 percent since 1979, in spite of the fact
that the supply of college-educated workers has doubled
over the same period (see Figure 7).
The dramatic increase in the wage premium paid to
college-educated workers since the 1980s is the best evidence
that the knowledge economy is here to stay. It also is the
counter argument that college-educated workers are ?taking
jobs that do not require college? or that ?employers are just
hiring degrees,? especially since these same employers
reduced the wage premium for college-educated workers in
the 1970s. Nor is it plausible that the college-level job
applicants in the 1980s were smarter than those a decade
before by such a large degree.
While workers with associate?s degrees earn less, on
average, than those with bachelor?s degrees, 83 percent
of workers with associate?s degrees have earnings that are
similar to bachelor?s degree holders (see Figure 8). Differences
often depend on students? majors and what they do
after they graduate. After separating the contributing effects
of workers? different characteristics, women with associate?s
degrees in business, for instance, earn about 18 percent more
than otherwise similar high school graduates; the returns for
social science degrees are about 38 percent (Grubb, 1996).
Over all, associate?s degrees generally provide workers with
a wage boost of about 20 to 30 percent over a high school
diploma (Grubb, 1999; Kane and Rouse, 1995; Leigh and
F6. EARNINGS DEPEND INCREASINGLY
ON EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT
Percent of prime age (30-59) employment. Earnings in 2000 dollars.
MALE WORKERS FEMALE WORKERS
80K
60K
40K
20K
Graduate Degree
Bachelor?s
Degree
Some College/AA
High School
Diploma
High School
Dropout
All Workers All Workers
Source: Authors? Analysis of Current Population Survey (March 1974 & 2000) and Public Use
Microdata Sample, 1960 Census.
F7. THE DEMAND FOR COLLEGE-EDUCATED WORKERS
HAS RISEN FASTER THAN SUPPLY SINCE 1979 (a)
Wage premium includes earnings of prime age (30-59) workers with at least
some college relative to high school graduates.
90
60
30
Postsecondary Wage Premium
Postsecondary Population Share
1959 1969 1979 1989 1998
F5. EMPLOYMENT AND EDUCATION, 1959-2000
Percent of total employment
40
30
20
10
More than two-thirds of workers
in growing, good-paying
occupations have postsecondary
education
Only one-third of the workers in
these declining or low-paying
occupations have postsecondary
education
Source: Authors? Analysis of Current Population Survey (March 1974 & 2000). Source: Authors? Analysis of Current Population Survey (March 1974 & 2000) and Public Use
Microdata Sample, 1960 Census.
Offi ce Jobs
Hospital/Classroom Jobs
High-Tech Jobs
Factory Jobs
Low-Skilled Service Jobs
Natural Resource Jobs
1959 1998 1959 1998
1959 1998 1959 1998
43%
72% 73%
57%
37%
19%
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 5
Gill, 1997). Similarly, the returns for workers with bachelor?s
degrees are roughly 40 percent more than high school graduates,
but range from 18 percent among men with education
degrees to 63 percent for men who majored in engineering
or computer science (Grubb, 1996).
EDUCATION FOR THE GREATER GOOD
Giving people the knowledge and the skills they need to
get and keep good jobs in our work-based society can have
positive personal and societal outcomes. Those with the
most education are much less likely to experience violence,
addiction, illness, incarceration, and other forms of abuse
(Grossman and Kaestner, 1997; Maynard and McGrath,
1997; Witte, 1997). The least educated also are more likely
to be living in poverty. In households headed by high
school dropouts, the poverty rate (22 percent) is 10 times
higher than in households headed by college graduates
(Census, 2001).
People who cannot get and keep jobs often drop out of
the political system, withdraw from community life and,
in some cases, create alternative economies, cultures, or
political structures that are even more damaging to the
mainstream. But those adults who receive at least some postsecondary
education are more likely to be employed, as well
as more likely to participate in civic activities. More than 85
percent of college-educated adults vote in elections, as compared
with one-half of high school dropouts and 72 percent
of high school graduates. Similarly, more than half of
bachelor?s degree holders participate in community service
activities, compared to 37 percent of high school graduates.
Highly educated adults also are more likely to be members
of community organizations (NCES, 1998).
FUTURE ECONOMIC AND
DEMOGRAPHIC REALITIES
Looking toward the future, the continuing growth in the
demand for skilled workers will exert persistent pressure on
the American education system to meet high standards for
a growing share of students. Jobs that require the levels of
assessed cognitive skills at the level currently associated with
workers who have some college but no bachelor?s degree
also are expected to grow the fastest. While employers generally
use education as a proxy for skills and abilities, there
are many occupations in which workers tend not to have
postsecondary credentials but still need high levels of skill to
perform the job.
Jobs that require skills typically demonstrated by fouryear
degree holders will likely grow by nearly 20 percent,
while those requiring skills similar to those with a subbaccalaureate
education will likely grow by 15 percent (see
Figure 9). Although the most robust job growth will occur
within skilled jobs, more moderate job growth and creation
will occur at the lower end of the skill continuum. Less
skilled jobs, those employing workers whose skills are
similar to high school students in the bottom half of their
graduating class or high school dropouts, are expected to
grow slower than average, by 13 percent.
Demographic shifts already on the horizon are expected
to further increase the demand for skilled workers. As the
baby boomers with postsecondary education retire over the
next 20 years, it will be diffi cult to produce a suffi cient
number of Americans with postsecondary education or
training to meet the economy?s needs. Shortages of workers
with some college-level skills could increase to more than 14
million by 2020 (see Figure 10).
F9. THE LABOR FORCE SPANS ALL SKILL LEVELS, BUT
PROJECTED JOB GROWTH FAVORS HIGH SKILL LEVELS
Shares of the Labor Force (16-64) by Literacy Level, Percent Growth, Distribution of Jobs,
and Average Annual Earnings of Year-round Workers (16-64)
Source: Authors? Analysis of National Adult Literacy Survey, 1992; Current Population Survey,
2001; BLS Employment Projections, 2001-2010.
Advanced/Superior
(B.A. Degree)
26% of Labor Force
Competent
(Some Postsecondary)
35% of Labor Force
Basic
( H.S. Graduate
Below Average)
24% of Labor Force
Minimal (Dropout)
15% of Labor Force
F8. THE DEMAND FOR COLLEGE-EDUCATED WORKERS
HAS RISEN FASTER THAN SUPPLY SINCE 1979 (b)
Wage premium includes earnings of prime age (30-59) workers with at least
some college relative to high school graduates.
Source: Authors? Analysis of Current Population Survey (March 1998).
0 $40K $80K $120K $160K $200K
80% of workers with associate?s degrees earn less than
$44,000 compared with 62% of workers with bachelor?s
degrees
Workers with Associate?s Degrees
Workers with Bachelor?s Degrees
38% of workers with bachelor?s
degrees earn more than $44,000
compared with 20% of workers
with associate?s degrees
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
5
We may not be able to afford all the postsecondary
education and training we need. Financing will be diffi cult,
as competition for resources throughout the education
pipeline will force hard fi scal choices. Preparation for college
begins in preschool, and increasing access to postsecondary
education requires increases in investment in the quantity
and quality of education throughout the entire pre-K-16
system. The cost of developing a network of pre-kindergarten
systems is estimated at $40 billion, and the added costs
of providing postsecondary education for Generation Y
could reach $19 billion by 2015 (Carnevale and Fry, 2001;
The Century Foundation, 2000).
Implementing new state standards in K-12 education
that prepare all students for some form of postsecondary
education or training will also be costly, especially as many
states are facing budget shortfalls. The greatest need will be
in school districts with high proportions of economically
disadvantaged, special needs, and limited English profi -
cient (LEP) students. The cost of educating these students
so that they meet state standards is roughly twice as high as
for other students (Augenblick and Myers, 2002; CEFEE,
2002; Duncombe, 2002). The increased resources needed
to fi nance an ?adequate education? for all students could
cost an additional $52 billion, increasing current education
expenditures for the nation as a whole to $387 billion.4
While the costs of delivering the education needed will be
high, the costs of failure will be even higher. Failure to meet
new standards will jeopardize America?s future competitiveness
in the global economy. The United States is currently
number one in the global economic race but mediocre performances
on international assessments of educational quality
suggest that its pre-eminent status is living on borrowed time.
Its current edge in global competition is based more on size
and market-based fl exibility and less on the quality of the
American workforce. In the future, as the European Union
and other global trading coalitions achieve scale and learn
fl exibility, and as fi nancial capital and technology become
even more footloose, the quality of human capital will become
the decisive competitive edge in global competition.
The new stakes are particularly high for individuals
because of America?s increasing reliance on education as
the means to economic opportunity. With the emphasis on
equality of educational opportunity rather than equality of
economic outcomes, individual educational performance
ultimately determines access to income and benefi ts.
And as economic and demographic changes increase the
demand for workers with at least some college, income
differentials between the most and least skilled will continue
to grow, threatening the egalitarian base at the core of
America?s culture.
Anthony P. Carnevale is a Senior Fellow with the National Center on
Education and the Economy. Donna M. Desrochers is a Director of
Policy Research with the Educational Testing Service.
REFERENCES
Augenblick and Myers, Inc. (2001). Calculation of the Cost of an
Adequate Education in Maryland in 1999-2000 Using Two Different
Analytic Approaches. Denver: Augenblick and Myers, Inc.
Accessed April 3, 2003 at www.aandm.org/papers.htm.
F10. LABOR DEMAND WILL OUTSTRIP SUPPLY
Expected Labor Forces (in millions) and Labor Force Demand (2002-2030)
Source: Adapted from Employment Policy Foundation, 2001.
2002 2006 2010 2014 2018 2022 2026 2030
Labor Needed
Labor Available
Shortage of 14 million
postsecondary workers
Shortage of 6 million
non-college workers
210
200
190
180
170
160
150
140
130
With the emphasis on equality of educational
opportunity rather than equality of economic outcomes,
individual educational performance ultimately
determines access to income and benefi ts.
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
w o r k i n g b r i e f 5
Augenblick and Myers, Inc. (2002). Calculation of the Cost of a Suitable
Education in Kansas in 2000-2001 Using Two Different Analytic
Approaches. Denver: Augenblick and Myers, Inc. Accessed
April 3, 2003 at www.aandm.org/papers.htm.
Bureau of the Census, U.S. Department of Commerce. (2001).
Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2001. Washington, DC: U.S.
Government Printing Offi ce.
Carnevale, A. P., and Fry, R. A. (2001). The Demographic Window of
Opportunity: Launching College Access and Diversity in the New
Century. In Condition of Access report to the U.S. Congress and the
Secretary of Education presented by the Advisory Committee on
Student Financial Assistance. Washington, DC.
The Century Foundation. (2000). Universal Preschool: Early Learning
for Success in School. Issue Brief No. 5. Accessed at www.info@tcf.org.
Commission on Education Finance, Equity, and Excellence (CEFEE).
(2002). Final Report. Annapolis, MD: Offi ce of Policy Analysis,
Library and Information Services.
Duncombe, W. (2002). Estimating the Cost of an Adequate Education
in New York. Center for Policy Research Working Paper No. 44.
Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Center for Policy Research.
Employment Policy Foundation. (2001 October). Future Labor and
Skill Shortages Jeopardize American Prosperity. Issue Brief. Washington,
DC: Author.
Flynn, J. R. (1998). IQ Gains Over Time: Toward Finding the Causes.
In U. Neisser (Ed.), The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and
Related Measures. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Greenfi eld, P. M. (1998). The Cultural Evolution of IQ. In U. Neisser
(Ed.), The Rising Curve: Long-Term Gains in IQ and Related
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Griffi th, M. (2001). A Survey of Finance Adequacy Studies. Denver,
CO: Education Commission of the States. Accessed April 4, 2003 at
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Grossman, M., and Kaestner, R. (1997). Effects of Education on
Health. In J. R. Behrman and N. Stacey (Eds.), The Social Benefi ts of
Education. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press.
Grubb, W. N. (1996). Working in the Middle: Strengthening Education
and Training for the Mid-skilled Labor Force. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
Grubb, W. N. (1999 April). Learning and Earning in the Middle: The
Economic Benefi ts of Sub-baccalaureate Education. New York:
Community College Research Center, Teacher?s College, Columbia
University.
Kane, T. J., and Rouse, C. E. (1995). Labor Market Returns to Twoand
Four-year College. American Economic Review, 85(3).
Krueger, A. B., and Lindahl, M. (1999). Education for Growth in
Sweden and the World. NBER Working Paper 7190. Cambridge,
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Leigh, D. E., and Gill, A. M. (1997). Labor Market Returns to
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McNeil, W. H. (1999). A World History (4th Edition). New York:
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(Notes)
1 The notion that knowledge increases economic growth and productivity,
skill requirements are growing, and people are becoming
more skilled is a safe bet. The economic value of knowledge has
increased inexorably for roughly 3,000 years since early effi ciencies
in agriculture provided food surpluses that freed up human labor
for more complex tasks (McNeil, 1999). Increasing complexity
requires more formal teaching and learning. At the same time, daily
life and work in environments of growing complexity also enhance
knowledge and reasoning ability as we learn by doing (Greenfi eld,
1998; Neisser, 1998; Schooler, 1998). The empirical evidence of
the synergy between social complexity and new learning ability is
that the performance on standardized tests of human reasoning
power has been rising about three points every decade ever since
testing began early in the 1900s. For instance, the average scores
for Americans taking the Wechsler-Binet or the Stanford reasoning
test have increased by 15 to 25 points since 1918 (Neisser, 1998).
In Great Britain, scores on the Raven Progressive Matrices test of
abstract reasoning show that score levels that included the bottom
w o r k i n g b r i e f
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
5
90 percent of the population born in 1877, include only the bottom 5
percent of the population born in 1967 (Flynn, 1998). These increases
in basic reasoning ability have occurred in spite of the fact that the
highest fertility rates persist among the lowest scorers. Although the
dispersion in the scores is not changing, scores are rising at similar
rates across the board.
2 The overall increases in gross domestic product from an additional year
of schooling are roughly similar to the earnings returns to individuals
from an additional year of schooling (Krueger and Lindahl, 1999).
3 The phrase, ?at least some college,? as well as the term ?college-educated,?
includes all those who have had coursework that leads to
associate or baccalaureate degrees, including both those who attain
a degree as well as those who pursue college coursework but do not
attain a degree.
4 Various state studies on adequate funding levels recommend
increases in basic expenditures ranging from 4 to 37 percent to
enable all students to meet state standards (Augenblick and Myers,
2001, 2002; Duncombe, 2002; Griffi th, 2001). An additional $53
billion in education expenditures assumes a 20 percent increase in
spending, as well as an extra 130 percent in per pupil spending for
each special-needs student and an extra 100 percent in per pupil
spending for each economically disadvantaged or LEP student.
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
d i s c u s s i o n g u i d e
d i s c u s s i o n g u i d e
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
?Opportunity in this country is more and more a
function of education.? That is the clear message of the
opening challenge essay and the accompanying working
briefs in this Keeping America?s Promise collection. Its close
corollary is that ?individual educational attainment levels
are powerfully correlated with many of the things we as
Americans care about in our society.?
Education matters. Those with the most education
are less likely to experience violence, addiction, illness, or
incarceration. The poverty rate in households headed by a
high school dropout is 10 times higher than that in households
headed by a college graduate. And, as Carnevale points
out, increasing the average level of schooling by even one year
can increase a country?s economic growth by 5 to 15 percent.
If America is to fulfill the promises that have been implied,
if not directly made, to its people and maintain its status as a
land of opportunity and leader in the global economy, then
policymakers and educators alike must carefully consider the
serious challenges raised by the writers in these pages.
Undoubtedly, community colleges must and will play a
critical role in educating and training a growing percentage
of our population for the requirements of a globally competitive
workforce in the 21st century. But what is not as
apparent is whether the public policy frameworks are in
place that will support America?s community colleges as
they gear up to meet the challenges that lie ahead. The policy
issues are clear, from funding and distribution of resources
to student access and success.
The Move From Local to State Support
From their creation in the early part of the 20th century to
the present, there have been significant shifts in the sources
of financial support for community colleges. In 1918, local
funds made up 94 percent of the support for junior
colleges (Cohen and Brawer, 1996). By the turn of the
21st century, revenue sources in most areas of the country
had shifted, and on average community colleges now
depend upon state support and student tuition and fees for
65 percent of their budgets (ECS, 2000).
While colleges in 26 states still collect support from a
local tax base, the trend for the past three decades has been
for states to assume an increasing percentage of community
college operating costs. With the recent downturn in
the economy resulting in the most serious fiscal crisis to hit
states in half a century, colleges have experienced drastic
rollbacks in state support. At the same time, they have also
been confronted with burgeoning enrollments from students
seeking new education and training opportunities.
A Clash Over Student Share of Cost
An ongoing conflict from the earliest days of the junior
college movement has been the question of how much
students should pay to attend a two-year institution. The
1947 Truman Commission recommended the establishment
of a national system of two-year community colleges within
commuting distance of every American, stressing the importance
of making public education free through Grade 14. But
the decreasing availability of local support, exacerbated by
the precipitous drop in state allocations for higher education
over the past few years, has led to significant reliance by
community colleges on student tuition and fees.
Concerns over dramatic tuition increases and the resulting
impact on student access have once again amplified
discussion among some state and federal policymakers
about the appropriate student share of cost for the first two
years of a college education. Politicians in South Carolina,
Massachusetts, and Texas, among others, have proposed
making community college education available at no or
reduced cost to their citizens.
K E E P I N G AME R I C A ? S P R OMI S E :
A D I S C U S S I O N G U I D E F O R S T A T E A N D
C OMMU N I T Y C O L L E G E L E A D E R S
Katherine Boswell { d i s c u s s i o n g u i d e
Community college leaders express profound concerns about
the shift from need-based to merit-based financial aid.
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
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Shift From Need-Based to Merit-Based Aid
In 1997 President Bill Clinton signed legislation authorizing
a federal tax credit called the ?Hope Scholarship,?
modeled after the merit-based scholarship program of the
same name in Georgia. One of the stated goals of the tax
credit is to provide universal access to at least two years of
college. Thirteen states have initiated their own merit
programs to encourage greater participation in higher
education (ECS, 2001).
While applauding the goals of making access to the
first two years of postsecondary education universal, many
community college leaders express profound concerns
about this shift from need-based to merit-based financial
aid programs. Such programs typically do not benefit the
part-time, low-income, nontraditional community college
student. Public investments in merit-based student aid have
significantly increased over the past decade; however, over
the same time period, the purchasing power of the Pell grant,
the largest need-based financial aid program, has decreased
by half (NCPPHE, 2002).
Battles Over Shares of the State Higher Education Pie
Surveys of current high school students indicate that
80 percent intend to continue on to higher education, and
almost half of all undergraduate students are now enrolling
at public community colleges. These traditional-age
students are being joined by adults who are returning to
postsecondary education in search of new job skills in an
uncertain economy. These combined factors suggest that
enrollment pressures on two-year colleges are only going
to increase.
Indeed, spiraling student enrollments are sparking
significant battles in some legislatures over the appropriate
distribution of increasingly limited state higher education
resources. Leaders of many four-year colleges and universities
fear that discussions about higher education funding
will be increasingly dominated by issues related to enrollment
growth, which will tend to benefit community colleges.
They question funding policies that in their view provide for
access at the expense of ensuring quality at upper-division
colleges and universities.
Creating Seamless Systems
Fiscal issues are not the only battleground in the postsecondary
policy wars. A recent study (Wellman, 2003) ?uncovered
a vital connection between effective state policies
and the success of students who transfer from two-year to
four-year institutions? (NCPPHE, 2004). The study identi-
fies ineffective state policies that tend to serve as barriers in
the transfer process from two-year to four-year institutions,
discouraging students from attaining baccalaureate degrees.
Ensuring seamless articulation and transfer between community
colleges and four-year institutions is critical because
it has become ?the single most important means for lowincome
and minority students to attain their baccalaureates?
(NCPPHE, 2004).
Policy concerns on student transitions, however, extend
beyond two-year to four-year articulation issues. There is
increasing recognition of the need for community colleges
to work more closely with the high schools in helping ensure
that graduates have the academic skills they need to succeed
in higher education and/or technical training opportunities.
Postsecondary enrollment options, including concurrent
enrollment, middle or early college initiatives, and
student bridge programs like Upward Bound and Gear-Up,
are recognized for the important role they play in encouraging
high school students to continue on to college. But
such programs necessitate new K-16 policy frameworks that
require cooperation and collaboration among our traditionally
disconnected educational sectors.
Other Policy Conflicts
Questions continue to be raised on the nation?s editorial
pages and in state capitals across the land regarding the high
percentage of entering college students who require remediation.
Regardless of the rhetoric, for the foreseeable future
community colleges are going to need to continue providing
the basic-skills education necessary to help students succeed
in college-level academic work. And state and institutional
leaders will continue heated debates over who should pay
and what is to be done to improve college readiness.
Other challenges have been raised by the courts and
citizen initiatives that call into question institutional affirmative-
action policies and programs. While such initiatives
Access and attainment gaps make it clear
that institutional practices and state and federal
policies need to change.
d i s c u s s i o n g u i d e
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
have typically been targeted at universities? selective admissions
policies, minority outreach programs and targeted
scholarships at community colleges have often fallen victim
in the ensuing policy debates.
CHALLENGES FOR POLICYMAKERS AND
COMMUNITY COLLEGE LEADERS
The data on access and attainment gaps for community
college students make it very clear that institutional practices
and state and federal postsecondary education policies need
to change. Educators and state policymakers have a joint
responsibility to consider carefully the trends and challenges
facing these open-access institutions. They must adopt wise,
effective policies and practices that will ensure the educational
opportunities that are the fulfillment of America?s
democratic ideals. State policymakers must address the
realities of escalating access demand at a time of severe fiscal
constraints brought on by sharp cutbacks in public appropriations.
They must also consider the increasingly diverse
nontraditional student population, many of whom come to
campus with significant needs for academic support. At the
same time, community college leaders have a responsibility
to re-examine their own practices and assumptions, holding
themselves accountable for adopting cost-effective and
learning-centered strategies that help ensure student success.
RECOMMENDATIONS
TO STATE POLICYMAKERS
State leaders should consider adopting a change in focus
from the endless debates between colleges and universities
over institutional capacity. They should avoid the false
dichotomy reflected in access versus quality arguments,
centering instead on identifying the education and training
needs of their state?s citizens. Resulting policies should
provide incentives to colleges to respond to these pressing
requirements and meet state priorities. Policymakers must
hold institutions accountable for educational outcomes
while providing the necessary fiscal investments in promising
academic initiatives that meet the needs of students.
With structural deficits in state higher education funding
projected for most states into the indefinite future, state
policymakers must also become better informed and base
policy decisions on data rather than parochial political
interests. A constructive step is to encourage the participation
of public community colleges in such data-driven
programs as the Community College Survey of Student
Engagement (CCSSE) and the Achieving the Dream
Initiative, recently launched by the Lumina Foundation.
Policymakers should also take advantage of a growing
body of national research and state-by-state data sets. A key
example is the ?Measuring Up? report card on higher
education, issued biennially by the National Center for
Public Policy and Higher Education and allowing states to
benchmark their own educational policies and performance
against other states. Also beneficial is participation in
projects such as the National Collaborative for Postsecondary
Education Policy, a joint initiative of the National Center
for Higher Education Management Services, the National
Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, and the
Education Commission of the States. Such projects help
public leaders rethink fundamental assumptions about how
to achieve the public purposes of higher education.
By providing incentives for institutions to collaborate
across educational sectors, supporting student unit data
systems that track students and their performance at every
level, and rewarding those institutions that meet expectations,
states can create more seamless systems that overcome
artificial or unnecessary educational barriers to student
success.
Policy Questions for Discussion
State policymakers should consider the following 10
sets of questions and issues raised by the Keeping America?s
Promise Initiative.
1. Funding Mechanisms.
? Is participation in public higher education a private or
public good? How is that value reflected in our state?s
policies and practices?
? If an educated citizenry is our state?s goal, what changes
should we consider for moving away from funding
based primarily on full-time enrollment of traditionalage
students and toward mechanisms that encourage
returning adults who seek additional education, training,
or lifelong learning opportunities?
2. Postsecondary Participation Rates. Although surveys
of high school students indicate 80 percent intend
to attend college, the current national college-going
rate is only 56.7 percent, with the best-performing
state having 69.4 percent of students enrolling in college
after high school.
? What are current participation rates of both 18- to 24-
year-olds and older working adults in postsecondary
education for our state?
? How can we increase our state?s participation rate to
match the benchmark participation rates of the bestperforming
states?
? What difference will a higher participation rate in
education and training make to our state?s economic
vitality?
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
d i s c u s s i o n g u i d e
3. Access and Capacity Issues. Given demographic
trends cited in this report, community colleges are
going to experience increase in demand even without
an increase in college participation rates.
? How can our state plan to meet the resource and
capacity needs of our two-year colleges today and into
the future, including times of budgetary constraints?
? How can our state manage the mix of state appropriations
and other revenue sources to ensure the fiscal
viability of our community colleges?
? What are the economic and social costs if we don?t
increase postsecondary capacity and students are
turned away?
? Where are we going to find the fiscal investments and
innovations to meet future demand?
4. Remediation. Many states are directing more
remediation and developmental education activities
away from four-year colleges and universities to
community colleges.
? Has this state directed community colleges to assume
the primary role in providing remediation to students
who lack college-level skills?
? If so, are we providing adequate financial support to
accomplish the work?
? What is the return on public investments in remediation
for students who lack college-level skills in our
state?
? What state policies support the delivery of remedial
education at community colleges?
? Are colleges with successful programs rewarded?
5. Participation and Attainment Gaps Between
Different Racial and Socioeconomic Groups.
? Do the data show that there are gaps in postsecondary
participation among different racial, ethnic, and
socioeconomic groups in our state?
? How can we do a better job of encouraging lessrepresented
groups to participate?
? Are state appropriations, tuition levels, and financial
aid programs aligned to expand opportunity for
community college students in our state, especially
students historically underrepresented in postsecondary
education?
? Does the state collect and monitor data about student
persistence and attainment, requiring that the data be
broken down by income level and ethnicity of
students?
6. Resources for Support of Nontraditional Students.
? Does the current allocation of state higher education
resources adequately support the colleges that serve
English as a Second Language students, adult learners,
and other groups that reflect the emergent majority of
postsecondary education students?
7. State Funding Formulas.
? To what extent do traditional higher levels of state
support for upper-division institutions than for twoyear
institutions represent a state?s legitimate interest
in creating a diversified system of higher education?
? To what extent do these differences represent inequities
that are not in a state?s best interest and which may
be counter to the policy of providing affordable access
to all citizens for postsecondary education and training?
? Does our funding formula differentiate between and
provide adequate support for high-cost versus lowercost
academic and technical programs?
8. K-16 Education Systems.
? How can our state use its funding leverage to encourage
greater cooperation and more seamless transitions
between K-12, community colleges, and public universities?
? Does our state require four-year institutions to accept
general education and academic major credits earned
at community colleges?
? Have we adopted a common core curriculum, common
course numbering, or other policy mechanisms
that help encourage student transitions between the
two- and four-year sectors?
9. Collaboration and Community Partnerships.
? What state policies support partnerships among local
organizations, businesses, and community colleges to
facilitate training and education opportunities linked
with well-paying jobs?
10. Higher Education Accountability.
? Have we as policymakers gone beyond the traditional
one-size-fits-all approach to higher education policy
to design appropriate and meaningful performance
indicators that reflect the discrete mission of the
community college?
? Do our state?s performance indicators take into
consideration the distinctive differences among
institutions (e.g., rural or urban colleges with a heavy
d i s c u s s i o n g u i d e
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
technological focus versus those with a primary role of
transfer education)?
RECOMMENDATIONS FOR
COMMUNITY COLLEGE LEADERS
AND TRUSTEES
In a time of increasing demand and shrinking resources,
it is somewhat understandable that community college leaders
are tempted to play the blame game or view themselves
as victims while avoiding responsibility for some of the
difficult challenges that are within institutional control. It is
easy enough to fault others: ?If the high schools would only
send us better prepared students?.? or, ?If we were funded
adequately to do what needs to be done, we could?.? But
as McClenney?s essay states so clearly, this is the work for
which these colleges were created, and these are the students
who need our help. In light of these challenges, community
colleges? traditional reliance upon anecdote rather than
data-supported evidence to report on performance may no
longer be good enough.
College leaders must begin to ask hard questions of
themselves and their institutions: Do we regularly collect,
analyze, and report on student learning and persistence?
Does our college break down student performance and
persistence data by age, socioeconomic status, race and
ethnicity, and other variables to identify groups of students
who may be falling behind? Has our college tried to identify
and adopt successful practices identified by the League?s
Learning College Project, or other policy and practice initiatives
that focus on student achievement?
Policy Questions for Discussion
These debates raise the following 10 sets of policy issues
and questions that college leaders should consider as they
seek to shape institutional policies and practices to meet
state and local needs:
1. The Open Door. Traditional wisdom holds that it is
easier to serve better-prepared, full-time students
than nontraditional students who have significant
remediation, English language, or other student
support needs.
? With increased access demands and pressures at a
time of severe fiscal constraints, what policies can we
adopt that will ensure access to those students who
may be hardest to reach, but who are most in need of
our services?
? How do we deal with capacity constraints without
favoring one group over another?
? How do we ensure that the traditional open door of
the community college remains open?
2. Needs of Nontraditional Students.
? With strong demand from traditional-age students,
how do we balance the needs of adults 25 and older
who are returning to community colleges?
? How do we shape college programs, services, and
systems to meet the needs of nontraditional students,
including those who are less engaged on campus
because of family or work responsibilities?
3. Needs of the Employed Student.
? What are the implications of having a high proportion
of ?employees who attend school? in our community
college classrooms as opposed to ?students who
work??
? How do we accommodate each group?s distinct needs?
4. Accountability.
? Have we embraced a culture of evidence and adopted
data-based decision making that informs our institutional
policies and practices?
? Do we regularly collect, analyze, and report data on
student learning and persistence?
5. The Opportunity and Attainment Gap.
? Does institutional enrollment data show an opportunity
gap or lower participation rates by socioeconomic
status, race, and ethnicity than is represented in our
institution?s service area?
? Are low-income students and students of color, especially
African Americans and Hispanics, succeeding at
rates comparable to their enrollment proportions at
our institution?
6. Remediation and Basic Skills.
? Are remedial and developmental education courses
providing pathways to vocational certificates and
academic degrees, or are they holding zones for students
who eventually drop out?
? How has our community college responded to the
demographic changes among our student population,
particularly the growing English as a Second Language
population and the increasing needs of adults to learn
basic skills?
7. Transfer and Articulation.
? How many four-year institutions does our community
college partner with to facilitate the successful transfer
of our students?
K e e p i n g A m e r i c a ? s P r o m i s e
d i s c u s s i o n g u i d e
? How well do our students do once they transfer?
? Do we use data on student performance after transfer
to reform our academic programs and practices?
8. Noncredit and Workforce Development.
? Are the noncredit courses offered by our college
aligned with job opportunities in the local community?
? Do we work closely with program advisory committees
from business and industry to ensure that our
curriculum is up to date and preparing our students
with skills needed in the real world?
9. Financial Aid.
? Do we know the impact of recent increases in tuition
and fees on our at-risk student population?
? What is our institution doing to offset a greater
reliance on student loans than grants and to make
need-based aid available to part-time and other
nontraditional students and at-risk populations?
10. Supportive Learning Environments.
? Given that, nationwide, 70 percent of students who
first enrolled in community colleges had at least one
risk factor and more than 50 percent had two or more,
what institutional policies can we adopt that will help
overcome these challenges to persistence and degree
attainment?
EPILOGUE
An old adage suggests that ?one will catch more flies with
honey?? As policymakers and college leaders consider
the reforms required to create more responsive education
systems, it may be useful to consider the value of incentives
as a tool for promoting institutional change, in addition to
traditional regulatory approaches. Do we reward or provide
positive reinforcement to those institutions willing to tackle
the toughest issues or challenges? Or do we inadvertently
bring truth to another adage, ?no good deed goes unpunished??
Is there congruence between what we say we value
and what we support with resources? Do we inspect what we
say we expect?
As we conclude this examination of the policy issues related
to keeping America?s promise, it might be worthwhile
to repeat Kay McClenney?s powerful challenge to each of us:
?Today we acknowledge again, more than 35 years
after Dr. King?s death, that even in a society as
powerful and wealthy as ours, even as good as we
think we try to be, there are people who are not
living the American dream. Still there are young
people who do not believe that the dream is their
dream. Still there are people who should be in our
colleges but are not. And there are people who are
there now but won?t achieve their goals. There are
promises that have been broken and promises that
just haven?t been kept...yet.? (McClenney, p. 17)
It is the sincere hope of the League for Innovation in the
Community College and the Education Commission of the
States that this report will stimulate a fresh dialogue among
education leaders and policymakers at the state and local
level and a renewed commitment to ensuring that we are a
nation that keeps its promises.
Katherine Boswell served as Project Manager for the Keeping America?s
Promise Initiative. She is a higher education policy consultant and
former Executive Director of the Center for Community College Policy
at the Education Commission of the States.
REFERENCES
Cohen, M.A., and Brower, F. B. (1996). The American Community
College. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.
Education Commission of the States. (2000). State Funding for Community
Colleges: A 50-State Survey. Denver: Author.
Education Commission of the States. (2001 June). ECS StateNote:
Merit Scholarships. Denver: Author.
Wellman, J. (2003). State Policy and Community College-Baccalaureate
Transfer. Washington DC: Institute for Higher Education Policy.
McClenney, K. M. (2004). Keeping America?s Promise: Challenges for
Community Colleges. Keeping America?s Promise. A joint publication
of Education Commission of the States and League for Innovation
in the Community College. Denver: Education Commission of
the States.
National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (NCPPHE).
(2002). Losing Ground: A National Report on the Affordability of
American Higher Education. San Jose: National Center for Public
Policy and Higher Education.
National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (NCPPHE).
(2004 May). Policy Alert: State Policies on 2/4 Transfers Are Key to
Degree Attainment. San Jose: National Center for Public Policy and
Higher Education.
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