Why community colleges are important

To meet the urgent needs of their students, community colleges have had to overcome many challenges, including the need to transition to remote instruction. Community colleges should lean into the challenge, not just by making small adjustments to courses and programs, but by working to realize longstanding goals to transform the college experience. Serving at the crossroads of education, work, and personal well-being, community and technical colleges are well positioned to make important contributions to the nation during the public health crisis and the long road to economic recovery.

However, we need to enact the right policies and make the right investments to harness and unleash the full potential of community colleges. In this brief , we elaborate on why community colleges matter, how the COVID crisis has exposed a need for change, and what is required for recovery. As the crisis continues to unfold, the Policy Trust will continue to share ideas and recommend policies designed to help ensure that all Americans have access to high-quality postsecondary opportunities that lead to economic advancement.

Be on the lookout for future blogs and virtual conversations in our Practitioner Insights for Recovery series. Colleges must explore how their campus structures reinforce systemic racism and then take steps to undo the inequities in education and economic outcomes that people of color experience.

JFF has developed a road map for crafting bold, innovative postsecondary policies that enable community colleges to play a key role in developing a strong workforce and ensuring economic opportunity for all. Low-income students were already at a disadvantage in getting good jobs because they lack the connections—the social capital. Co-enrollment in a Four-Year Institution.

Roughly 80 percent of community college students hope to transfer to a four-year institution. For many reasons, including the opportunity cost of continuing advanced education, most never do.

Co-enrollment in a four-year college or university offers a way to increase the transfer rate and make the transition more seamless. Fields of Study Curricula These pathways, which tightly align community college and four-year college curricula, address a major challenge: The loss of credits when students transfer.

Articulation agreements have proven insufficient, since actual credits are often awarded by individual departments or colleges. Meta Majors Meta Majors introduce students to broad fields of study and open windows into possible jobs. Meta Majors can help students identify potential majors and career paths at an early stage in their college career, making it less likely that students will change majors later at great expense in terms of money and time. Structured Pathways These degree paths that are more coherent, synergistic, and carefully sequenced than traditional majors.

A notable example involves mathematics courses tailored to a particular degree track. Stackable Credentials Stackable credentials offer a way to ensure that students who might stop out acquire a certificate or certification with genuine value in the job market. Might it not make sense to see these responsibilities as symbiotic, ensuring that many more students who graduate or transfer from a community college already possess a marketable skill validated with a credential?

Blurring the divide between the vocational and the academic might also serve another valuable function: Helping students better understand their career options. Co-requisite courses — which combine a credit course and a remedial section — have been offered as a possible solution, but other possibilities exist. These include diagnostics to pinpoint specific areas that require remediation; software to build skills in crucial areas; and intensive boot camps that focus on a specific challenge.

A long-term evaluation of Project QUEST shows a significant and sustained impact on earnings for students who were randomly assigned to receive the program services. This shows the economic gains to be had from investing more resources in helping community college students persist.

Evidence suggests that well-designed programs that provide comprehensive student services can improve persistence and completion rates among community college students. The personalized and intensive nature of these programs mean that they can be costly to implement. Though these are sizable costs, this price tag is low compared to the economic benefits associated with college degree attainment. For the previously listed programs to have a large and sustained impact on college completion rates at a national level, they would need to be implemented on a much larger scale.

Recently, higher education advocates and some policymakers have called for enhanced government support for programs that provide wraparound services at community colleges. President Biden endorsed this idea during his presidential campaign. If there is political and philanthropic will, comprehensive student support programs can be made broadly available and help thousands, potentially millions, of students succeed in college.

Brown Center Chalkboard. The Brown Center Chalkboard launched in January as a weekly series of new analyses of policy, research, and practice relevant to U. In July , the Chalkboard was re-launched as a Brookings blog in order to offer more frequent, timely, and diverse content.

Contributors to both the original paper series and current blog are committed to bringing evidence to bear on the debates around education policy in America. Read papers in the original Brown Center Chalkboard series ».

Rachel Fulcher Dawson Ph. Melissa S. So far, I am unimpeded by student loan debt which my future self is already thankful for. I cannot imagine going to any other institution.

Once you get into a community college setting, all of the stigmas surrounding it fall apart immediately. The Collegiate Live. GRCC cross country teams expected to make strong showing Saturday at nationals. Recent Posts.