Should community colleges recruit the rich?
Community colleges aren’t segregated by race or income, argues Jamal Abdul-Alim in Diverse. “Community colleges are inadequately funded and they’re increasingly segregated by race and class,” said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation in announcing a new report, Bridging the Higher Education Divide. To increase diversity, community colleges should recruit middle-class and affluent [...]
Credits without hours?
There’s a growing wave of enthusiasm for degrees based on competency rather than credit hours. Echoing Sherman Dorn, Matt Reed asks whether high ed should just drop the “hours” from “credit hours.” His answer: Because then “credits” could mean anything or nothing. For-profit providers have an incentive to inflate credits, writes Reed, who’s worked in the [...]
Many choices, little guidance
Community college students have many choices and little guidance in setting academic or career goals, concludes a Community College Research Center study. “Offering students multiple course and degree options, major choices, and course delivery methods—though intellectually appealing—may overwhelm students, create barriers to their success, and contribute to their ultimate failure,” write researchers Shanna Smith Jaggars and Jeffrey Fletcher. Community [...]
If you don’t get a job, the training is free
A new for-profit program charges no tuition — until graduates find a job, reports ABC News/Yahoo. App Academy offers an intensive nine-week course in software coding to students in New York City and San Francisco. “Our goal is to place students as software engineers,” said Kush Patel, one of App Academy’s co-founders. “We don’t care [...]
Look at outcomes for all colleges
Federal aid is subsidizing colleges with low graduation, loan repayment and employment rates, writes Judah Bellon on Minding the Campus. Instead of singling out for-profit higher education, regulators should scrutinize the outcomes of all colleges and universities that rely on federal loans and grants. For-profit colleges enroll more black, Hispanic, low-income and older students than public [...]
‘Gainful employment’ regs will return
The U.S. Education Department will rewrite “gainful employment” regulations fought bitterly by for-profit colleges, according to a notice published in the Federal Register. The department plans to use “negotiated rule-making” to move forward its agenda on college aid and affordability, substituting regulation for legislation, notes Inside Higher Ed. The traditional venue for enacting long-term changes [...]
Pell spending inches down
Pell spending declined slightly halfway through 2012-13, reports the American Association of Community Colleges. Grants cost $16.6 billion compared to $16.7 billion the year before and $17 billion in 2010-11. Fall enrollments declined by 3.1 percent at community colleges, while Pell recipients were down 7.2 percent, AACC estimates. Total Pell Grant funding for community college students fell by [...]
Career colleges see job training gap
California’s community colleges can’t meet the demand for career job training, argues a study commissioned by Corinthian Colleges Inc., which operates Heald College and WyoTech automotive schools. Nearly 2.5 million Californians will be shut out of job training over the next decade, predicts “Left Out, Left Behind: California’s Widening Workforce Training Gap.” If skilled jobs go unfilled, that will result [...]
Community colleges must adapt or die
If community colleges cling to the “mini-university model,” they’ll fail, warns Bruce Leslie, chancellor of the Alamo Colleges in San Antonio, in the Huffington Post. Community colleges serve almost half of higher education’s students today but face funding cuts, cost-sensitive customers and aggressive competitors, writes Leslie. Community colleges’ image is confusing and overly broad. The [...]
Retention’s up, enrollment’s down
Determined to raise retention rates, Klamath Community College mandated orientation and advising and eliminated late registration, reports Paul Fain on Inside Higher Ed. The cost of improved retention was lower enrollment. The small college in southern Oregon saw enrollment fall 20 parent last fall, cutting state funds by $800,000, more than 7 percent of Klamath’s total annual budget. [...]
