The great remedial pushdown
State universities are pushing remedial classes to community colleges, and some community colleges are pushing low-level remediation to adult ed programs, I write in U.S. News.
CC cuts push students to costly for-profit schools
Cierra Nelson spent four years trying to complete prerequisites for a nursing program at a community college in southern California. Again and again, she was turned away from science classes she needed, such as anatomy and physiology. Finally, she gave up on the low-cost community college and borrowed more than $50,000 to attend a for-profit, Everest College, writes Chris Kirkham in the Huffington Post.
“When I first saw how high it was, it was kind of a shock,” said Nelson, who eventually came to the conclusion that taking out loans made more sense than waiting semester after semester to take the community college classes she needed to advance. “I know it’s a lot of money and I’ll be in debt, but I’ve got to do what I need to do.”
More than 90 percent of nursing graduates at nearby community colleges last year passed state licensing exams, compared to fewer than 70 percent of Everest students. But Everest students are able to graduate without spending years on wait lists.
For-profit colleges enroll more low-income, minority and adult minority students than other institutions. Graduation rates are higher for career programs that take two years or less, much lower for bachelor’s programs. Default rates on student loans are significantly higher.
While for-profit schools can raise money to expand quickly in high-demand fields, community colleges have cut classes to cope with funding cuts, Kirkham writes.
California has been hit especially hard. Some 200,000 community college students will be turned away from classes next school year, the chancellor’s office predicts.
That amounts to more than 7 percent of the entire state’s community college student body, and that does not count those who gave up on plans to enroll due to the difficulties of securing classes.
After accounting for inflation, California is now spending the same amount on community colleges that it did six years ago, despite adding more than 175,000 students in that period, a nearly 20 percent increase. On a per-student basis, the state is spending less this year than it was 15 years ago.
Riverside Community College in southern California has room for 200 students; some 1,500 applicants are on a wait list. And many more, like Nelson, aren’t able to get into the required classes that will qualify them for the wait list.
In just the past year, California’s community colleges have cut between 5 and 15 percent of their course offerings, according to the state community college chancellor’s office. Among the hardest hit were costly, yet crucial workforce training programs such as computer information systems, nursing and other health care-related majors, such as radiologic technology.
No wonder students are choose for-profit career colleges, despite the much higher costs.
Federal grants will fund job retraining
Nearly $500 million in federal job retraining grants will help community colleges work with employers to develop new programs in advanced manufacturing, transportation, health care, STEM occupations and other fields.
Here’s the list of recipients announced this week by the Labor Department.
Community colleges in 10 states were shut out. No colleges in Connecticut, Louisiana, Nevada and New Mexico received a grant. “Florida, a presidential battleground state with several high-profile community colleges, only received a portion of a shared grant, as did Indiana and Iowa,” reports Inside Higher Ed.
The $500 million is supposed to be the first installment of four, but community college advocates say they’ll have to fight hard to protect the promised $1.5 billion from congressional budget cutters.
Alabama colleges hire phony PhDs
The president of an Alabama community college holds a diploma-mill PhD asserts Dumb in Alabama: College Presidents Have Diploma Mill Degrees in The American Reporter. According to Richard Hardin, a researcher for of Alabama Cooperative for Public Education, Bishop State‘s president, James Lowe, Jr., holds a PhD from San Francisco Technical University, an unaccredited school.
Academic deans also lack academic qualifications: Latitia McCane, dean of Instructional Services at Bishop State, claims a PhD from Lacrosse University and Bruce E. Gearhart, director of Educational Talent Search at Trenholm State, holds a PhD from Columbia Pacific University. All are notorious diploma mills that lack accreditation, Hardin writes.
A 2008 Alabama law requires college employees to hold credentials from “duly accredited institutions,” but state officials have not investigated reports of ineligible college employees, Hardin charges.
Where are Q&A sites?
Where are Q&A sites with information about community colleges? AAS Degrees list 25 useful sites from around the country.
Community colleges in the 21st century
The 21st-Century Commission on the Future of Community Colleges will rethink the mission of the nation’s largest and fastest growing higher education sector.
The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) named three co-chairs to guide the 36-member commission: San Diego Community College District Chancellor Emeritus Augustine Gallego, Cuyahoga Community College President Jerry Sue Thornton, and Dr. Kay McClenney, director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement.
In addition to college and university leaders, the commission includes Kati Haycock of the Education Trust, Mark Milliron of the Gates Foundation, Diana Oblinger of EDUCAUSE and James T. Ryan of W.W. Grainger, Inc.
“We have very intentionally selected commissioners who bring diverse viewpoints and backgrounds,” said AACC President Walter G. Bumphus. “That includes a few friendly critics who have consistently challenged community colleges to increase accountability and improve student outcomes.”
The first commission meeting will be held Aug. 12 in Washington, DC.
“We will focus the collective intellect of the commission on such issues as use of disruptive technologies to speed learning and the redesign of structures, calendars and processes to better match the needs of our increasingly diverse student population,” Bumphus said. “We will also not shy from criticism, such as our perceived need to be all things to all people.”
Community colleges are trying to cope with rising demand for education and job training and declining state funding. President Obama wants community colleges to graduate an additional 5 million students with degrees and certificates by 2020.
A compromise on ‘gainful employment’
Compromises tend to please nobody: Critics of for-profit higher education say the Education Department’s “gainful employment” rule, announced yesterday, is too weak, while the industry complains it unfairly cuts off access to student loans.
Under the new regulation (pdf), career training programs will have to show that at least 35 percent of former students are repaying their loans (reducing the loan balance by at least $1 a year) or that the typical graduate’s annual loan payment does not exceed 30 percent of discretionary income or that the typical grad’s payment does not exceed 12 percent of total earnings.
“We’re asking companies that get up to 90 percent of their profits from taxpayer dollars to be at least 35 percent effective,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said.
Career colleges will get more time to comply: Those that miss the targets in the first year must report the data and write an improvement plan. After two years, they must warn students of high debt to earnings ratios. Only after three years would a program lose access to student aid.
For-profit education companies’ stock prices soared when the regulations were announced. That suggests the career colleges will be able to adapt without much pain. Some already are requiring new students to go through an orientation designed to screen out the unprepared and unmotivated. Others may lower tuition to improve students’ ability to repay loans.
Industry spokesmen still claim only Congress has the authority to limit access to student loans. In February, a bipartisan group in Congress voted to block the regulation, but the compromise may persuade legislators to let the Education Department set loan rules.
The original version of the rule called for a 45 percent repayment rate, “a debt-to-discretionary-income ratio of 20 percent or a debt-to-income ratio of 8 percent,” notes Inside Higher Ed. Colleges faced an immediate eligibility cut-off. The regulation included an intermediate “restricted” status that would have required colleges to cap enrollment and warn students of high debt levels.
In the final regulations, the restricted status has been eliminated and replaced with the “three strikes” rule, which department officials say is closer to its policies in other areas, such as on student loan default rates. Colleges would have to fail to meet each of the criteria for three years out of four. In the meantime, they would not face enrollment caps, though they would still have to tell students the first year that they missed the target and warn them about the program’s status after the second.
. . . Students have been allotted a longer time to pay off loans, so that the annual debt burden is lower: a 10-year term remains in place for certificate or associate degree programs, but bachelor’s and master’s degree candidates would have 15 years to pay off their loans, and other graduates would have 20.
Students’ default rates will be measured three and four years out of college, instead of starting in the first year, and those in government repayment programs won’t be counted as defaulters, even if they’re only repaying the interest on the loan.
Only 5 percent of the for-profit programs covered by the rules, and 1 percent of the public and nonprofit career programs would lose eligibility for student aid, Education Department officials estimated.
Only the worst 1 percent will be cut off by 2015, predicts the Center for American Progress.
The final rule also gives the poorest-performing education programs significant time to comply with the rule in addition to eliminating the restrictions on dubious-but-not-ineligible programs. Colleges that fail to meet the metrics can continue to operate for three years without losing federal funds and without any cap on enrollment growth.
Education Trust called the compromise a “disappointment.”
Sen. Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who’s lambasted the industry in a series of Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee hearings, called the regulations a “modest and important first step.”
Republicans John Kline of Minnesota, House Education and the Workforce chair, and Virginia Foxx of North Carolina, who chairs the subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Training, said the rule is a step in the wrong direction. “This punitive regulation piles more burdensome red tape” on career colleges, Foxx said. “The increasingly fragile economic recovery simply cannot afford another job-destroying federal regulation.”
One of the few who unreservedly likes the compromise (pdf) is Mark Kantrowitz of FinAid.org, who calls the final rule “a reasonable, thoughtful and responsive approach.”
If this rule is a first step, as many critics of career colleges called it, then what’s the next step? Once the Education Department starts analyzing student outcomes, it could take a close look at community colleges, which have very low completion rates compared to for-profits’ two-year career programs. The three-year graduation rate is 58 percent at for-profit two-year programs compared to 21 percent at community colleges, according to the new Condition of Education report.
Of course, community colleges don’t have a significant loan default problem because tuition is heavily subsidized by local and state taxpayers: Few community college students need to take out student loans, though many more get Pell Grants. But community colleges are raising tuition to balance budgets, making it more likely students will need loans. And Pell Grants are under close scrutiny by budget cutters, who see costs exploding while graduation rates remain low.
CC transfers boost diversity at top colleges
Elite colleges enroll few low-income students and many very high-income students, notes the New York Times. The “single easiest way” to increase socioeconomic diversity is to accept community college transfers, the Times writes. Transfers have made the University of California campuses in Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego much more diverse than other top colleges.
The truth is that many of the most capable low- and middle-income students attend community colleges or less selective four-year colleges close to their home. . . . Incredibly, only 44 percent of low-income high school seniors with high standardized test scores enroll in a four-year college, according to a Century Foundation report — compared with about 50 percent of high-income seniors who have average test scores.
“The extent of wasted human capital,” wrote the report’s authors, Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, “is phenomenal.”
While drop-out rates are high at community colleges, students who succeed tend to be highly motivated and far more likely to be “war veterans, single parents and immigrants who have managed to overcome the odds,” writes the Times.
Amherst has succeeded in boosting socioeconomic diversity: Some 22 percent of students now qualify for Pell Grants, up from 13 percent in 2005. One strategy: 62 percent of transfer students came from a community college.
New ways to build skills, careers
We must “re-think, re-design and re-connect” career education, argues “New Approaches to Acquiring Skills and Building Careers in a 21st Century Global Job Market” by Mitch Rosin, editorial director at McGraw-Hill Education, and Barbara Bolin, president of the National Organization for Career Credentialing.
The stigma against vocational education has lead to a 70 percent decrease in federal funding for workforce development from 1994 to 2010, the authors write. Yet the percentage of jobs described as “skilled” continues to increase, rising from 15 percent of all jobs in the 1950s to 85 percent of jobs today. In a recent survey, 61 percent of employers report being unable to fill many job openings because of poor applicant skills, notes Bolin.
The Obama administration is funding the Community College and Career Training Grant Program and trying to connect local employers with community colleges. However, community colleges aren’t prepared to handle the increasing demand for low-cost education and job training.
The report recommends:
Sector-based job training programs (sometimes called bridge programs) that focus on training applicants for particular industries while stressing both academic and career education; The Career Readiness Certificate, a standardized skills credential that is universally recognized, portable, and transferable between industry sectors; when combined with an academic credential such as a high school diploma or GED, it provides a foundation upon which people can build their careers; Reinvention of the GED test to become more standardized and academically rigorous; A greater investment in community colleges to expand enrollment and enhance resources and infrastructure; and Providing greater access to online learning and resources that benefit adult learners and have shown to increase the number of U.S. job-seekers with GED credentials, post-secondary degrees and other professional credentials.
The report also recommends tools to help job-seekers decide on their career paths, such as McGraw-Hill Education’s Contemporary Workforce Connects, which “helps learners acquire the specific skills they need to qualify for specific jobs.”
A $10,000 bachelor’s? Texas CCs say ‘yes’
In his State of the State address, Texas Gov. Rick Perry challenged the state’s universities to create a $10,000 no-frills bachelor’s degree with the help of online and AP credits. Perry says he was inspired by Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
University leaders say it can’t be done without heavy state subsidies. Online classes aren’t cheaper, if done well, for example.
Some community colleges are doing it now and could do more, reports Melissa Ludwig in the San Antonio News-Express. “It is an idea that is long overdue,” said Shirley Reed, president of South Texas College in McAllen.
At South Texas College, bachelor’s degrees in technology management and computer and information technology cost about $10,000. The cheapest bachelor’s degree at a four-year state university is $18,000 at Texas A&M University in Texarkana.
Brazosport College and Midland College also offer bachelor’s of applied technology degrees. The Alamo Colleges hopes to add a four-year fire science degree. However, the Texas House’s proposed budget eliminates funding for all bachelor’s degree programs at community colleges and closes Brazosport and three other community colleges altogether.
Community colleges can offer alternatives, but universities also need to control costs, said Commissioner of Higher Education Raymund Paredes. “If we keep going the way we are, a baccalaureate degree at a public university will cost $100,000 at some institutions in five years. We can’t go there.”
Community colleges keep costs low because they pay faculty and staff less money and they hire adjunct professors, who are cheaper than tenured faculty. They don’t do research, they don’t field NCAA football teams and they don’t build dormitories and recreation centers.
Those things are what make up the “college experience,” and there will always be young students who want that and will pay for it, Paredes said. But there is plenty of evidence to suggest a growing demand from students who are older, who work, who have families and who simply want a degree as fast and cheaply as possible, he said.
A “low-cost, no-frills degree” should be an alternative, Paredes said.
Community colleges in 17 states offer bachelor’s programs. In Florida, 19 of 28 community colleges offer four-year degrees in high-demand fields such as nursing, education and applies sciences.
Update: Khan Academy is expanding its no-cost online courses by partnering with Bittorrent. What Khan needs is an independent agency to test students’ learning and award a credential employers will recognize, writes Instapundit. Why not Texas?
