Already hit by rising enrollments and fundinc cuts, community colleges will face even more demand as high-cost for-profits lose students due to new Education Department loan rules. Proposed rules linking loan eligibility to default rates and debt ratios will affect only 8 percent of for-profit students in 5 percent of programs, Education Secretary Arne Duncan predicts. However, 55 percent of for-profits will have to warn students of graduates’ high debt loads and limit enrollment growth.
The community colleges don’t have the capacity to serve displaced students and grow to meet rising demand, unless they get money to expand. It will have to be federal money, because the states are well and truly broke.
Even with more funding, the public sector has proven to be no better than the private sector — and perhaps worse — at educating poorly prepared students and training them for jobs.
When he was at the Gates Foundation, Tom Vander Ark commissioned a study on how to double the number of low-income college graduates. The private sector is critical, he concluded.
A Parthenon report found that most private sector providers “do a better job graduating students, deliver superior income gains, and do so at a societal cost comparable to public institutions. This is an especially important perspective, as many of these graduates represent a high-risk student profile.”
Community colleges are trying to redesign remedial classes to help more high-risk students succeed. Colleges are trying to design job training programs for low-skilled, low-income adults. But these efforts are in the early stages.
The community colleges will need to imitate the for-profit sector’s flexible scheduling and online options to meet the needs of working adults, parents and other non-traditional students.
In the long run, community colleges should worry that a crackdown on low-performing for-profit colleges will spread to the public sector. Loan defaults are lower when taxpayers subsidize most of the costs: Students who borrow less find it easier to pay back their loans. But long-term default rates are high for community college students – 31 percent default by 15 years — reports the Chronicle of Higher Education. And it’s reasonable to ask if taxpayers should keep subsidizing college programs with very low completion rates.
The Hechinger Report has much more on the growth of the for-profit sector and the new loan rules’ implications.
Inside Higher Ed takes a closer look at the new loan rules, though the basic conclusion remains: Nobody’s sure how these will play out.
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[...] of students is bound to send more would-be students to community colleges, which already are overwhelmed by rising demand, I write on Community College Spotlight (and as a Hechinger sidebar). Many [...]