Democrats target for-profit colleges
At the first in a series of hearings on for-profit higher education, Sen. Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat, hit the for-profit sector for taking a disproportionate share of federal aid and for students’ high default rate on loans, reports the New York Times. Fueled by federal student aid, the for-profit sector has mushroomed. While overall [...]
Michigan: Adult ed needs cc partners
Hit hard by the recession, Michigan hopes to reform adult education by working with community colleges and the state’s workforce development system to help the unemployed build academic and work skills. But funding is short, reports the Lansing State Journal. Ideally, state and federal adult education money would flow to regional partnerships, says Andy Levin, [...]
CC transfers rise in Virginia, Maryland
Thanks to an improved transfer pipeline, public universities in Virginia and Maryland are drawing more community college students, reports the Washington Post. Community college transfers rose 36 percent in Maryland and 34 percent in Virginia from 2000 to 2008, outpacing overall college enrollment growth in those states. Transfers to the University of Virginia doubled in [...]
The new mission
Rebalancing the Mission: The Community College Completion Challenge, a policy brief by the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), looks at the issues colleges will face as they move from focusing on access to stressing success. The new mission includes providing dual-credit classes for high school students, affordable classes for “swirlers” also enrolled in four-year [...]
Open access? Not any more
Open access is an empty promise at community colleges these days, reports the New York Times. With less funding and more students, colleges can’t offer enough courses to meet the demand. In three terms at Mt. San Antonio College east of Los Angeles, Ashley Diaz has been able to get into only one academic class [...]
Gulf colleges expand oil clean-up training
As the need for oil-spill clean-up workers grows, more Louisiana community colleges are offering free training, reports the News-Star. Colleges in the Louisiana Community and Technical College System already have trained more than 1,000 spill-response workers, who can expect to earn a starting salary of $12 per hour. About 35 students, some from neighboring Gulf [...]
Hurry-up job training
Unemployed workers need hurry-up job training so they can get back in the workforce, argued Jamie P. Merisotis, president of the Lumina Foundation for Education, and Stan Jones, president of Complete College America, at a Washington, D.C. forum sponsored by the New America Foundation and the Washington Monthly. They called for “colleges that combine the [...]
Small businesses turn to colleges for training
Small businesses are turning to local community colleges to train employees, reports the Los Angeles Times. At Juanita’s Foods in Wilmington, for example, employees at the Mexican food manufacturer are learning how to identify and cut waste in each step it takes to make and deliver the company’s signature menudo stew, among other products. The [...]
CCs offer fast track to teaching
Professionals can qualify for teaching jobs in 16 weeks through the Career Switchers program offered at 11 of Virginia’s 23 community colleges, reports the Washington Post. Despite the recession, Virginia is short of teachers in some fields. The program trains students to teach math, science, English, biology, chemistry, earth science and physics in grades six [...]
Regulating for-profits
National Journal’s Education Experts discuss regulating for-profit higher education. One proposed regulation will ban incentive pay based on how many students a recruiter signs up. Another — held back for further consideration — would cut federal aid to for-profits whose graduates pay more than 8 percent of their salary to service their student-loan debt. The [...]
