Education should be for students, not for shareholders.
President Barack Obama’s State of the Union proposal for free community college brought that issue to the forefront of national attention – and for very good reason, since community colleges currently enroll nearly half of U.S. college students. The positive economic impact of these schools justifies increased government investment. California Community Colleges educate a workforce that the state sorely needs. Community college transfer students constitute a third of University of California students and a half of California State University students, making CCCs the premier in-state pathway for transfering to four-year university systems, which produce students even more valuable to the California economy.
However, many people who might go to community colleges end up making a different choice. For most students, especially poor and working ones, the choice of higher education is usually between inexpensive and accessible community colleges or costly and predatory for-profit colleges. In California, students have been flocking to the latter despite the financial risk because of a systemic disinvestment in the already cash-strapped former. For-profit colleges are winning, even as they bankrupt students. Almost all FPC students take out loans averaging nearly $40,000, while default rates for graduates are four times higher than that of community college students.
Investing in community college is the best way to improve transfer outcomes to UC and CSU schools and veer students away from the path to FPCs, which in turn boosts graduate salaries and the state’s economy. Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed 8 percent increase in CCC funding is a first step in this direction, but he cannot rest on his laurels because it merely reverses over half a decade of budget free fall that has made transferring to four-year universities difficult. Those budget cuts ultimately shut students out of important classes and increase class sizes. Community colleges need more attention and money than ever in an economy that demands a more educated labor force.
Community colleges are hard-pressed to compete with for-profit schools, since low-income working students are often attracted to the latter because of strong marketing campaigns and offers of flexible class times and online classes, as well as the perception of financial safety through federal student loans.
The education these institutions provide is very similar to the sort that is offered at their public community college counterparts: vocational certificates and degrees intended for application to specific professions. While CCCs produce workforce-prepared graduates and capable transfer students, results vary greatly for FPC students; these graduates often end up earning less and stories about worthless degrees abound.
Community colleges are cheaper and more legitimate, but enrollments have declined because of the decreasing number of course offerings and understandable reality that community colleges do not have scores of recruiters informing students often too busy with employment to do their own research in detail.
In lieu of direct sanctions against for-profit colleges, a significant reinvestment in CCCs could bolster student desires to attend them instead of for-profit institutions. Taxpayer money is going toward education regardless – it only makes sense that the money yields results that strengthen the economy rather than create crippling debt. Community college students graduate or transfer to the UC owing less and are in a better position to spend money and attain gainful employment.
The CCC system was created in 1967 as stipulated by the California Master Plan for Higher Education. The 112-school system sits at the bottom of a three-tiered pyramid of higher education, but as such, it is also the bedrock of state postsecondary instruction.
The schools educate a large swath of students of all ages and two-thirds of first-generation college students in California. To put things in perspective, CCCs’ enrollment of 2.4 million part- and full-time students, which makes it the largest higher education system in the country, is greater than the entire living alumni population of UC students.
The Master Plan for Higher Education envisions free or inexpensive education for all – the precise opposite of what for-profit colleges represent. Boosting community colleges doesn’t just reaffirm Sacramento’s commitment to the ambitious goals of the Master Plan for Higher Education. Funding them thwarts an industry that is poised to erode that plan, which aims to give any community college student the opportunity to attend a university.