Forum Brief

Reinventing Community Colleges for the 21st Century

A Forum — April 8, 1994

Background

No family of institutions is being asked to play a larger role in resolving America's economic and social problems than community colleges. Yet few institutions are less understood or less appreciated by federal policymakers.

To shed light on the current status and future challenges facing community colleges, the American Youth Policy Forum invited Dr. Cathryn Addy and Dr. Paul Elsner, two of the nation's foremost community college leaders. Both offered glimpses into their own institutions and reflected on issues facing community colleges -- particularly those related to federal policy.

Two themes predominated: the diversity among community [and technical] colleges in terms of size, programmatic focus, and funding; and the important and varied array of social and economic needs community colleges are being asked to address.

Community colleges are a primary resource to address fundamental challenges facing our end-of-the-century society:

training a technical workforce for the information age;
remediating the millions of young and not-so young adults who lack basic academic and work skills;
making 4-year baccalaureate degrees more attainable by providing students an accessible, high-quality, low-cost venue for the first years of college;
providing training and technical assistance to help large and small companies implement new technologies;
helping public schools blaze a clear path for young people from school to careers.

Yet these activities comprise only part of what community colleges do. Many two-year colleges also provide continuing education and enrichment courses in everything from creative writing to bookkeeping to LOTUS 1-2-3. Many operate job training programs to re-employ the poor. Some operate small business assistance centers, while others offer entrepreneurial training to help citizens start and expand small businesses.

Dr. Paul Elsner

Maricopa County Community College District (MCCCD) is an immense educational enterprise. Spread over 9,200 square miles in and around Phoenix, the District operates 10 colleges and enrolls 180,000 students every year. MCCCD runs two radio stations, a statewide teleconferencing network, 9 small business development centers, an award-winning technology transfer program for nearby industry, a national center of "Campus Compact" for student community service, an education "think tank" in partnership with nine local school districts, a national "leaders institute" for women corporate executives, and a branch of Motorola University serving 30,000-40,000 of that corporation's employees worldwide each year.

In its core curriculum programs the Maricopa colleges enroll 96,000 students each year, with a full-time equivalent enrollment of 60,000 students. The bulk of these students are in college transfer programs; the majority (56 percent) of upper division students at Arizona State University began their post-secondary studies at Maricopa.

Twenty years ago Maricopa received 56 percent of its operating revenues from the State of Arizona; today, the state contributes just 16.6 percent of Maricopa's funding. Local property taxes now provide 61 percent of the Maricopa budget, while tuition and fees provide another 19 percent.

Diversity among colleges. After providing this detail about Maricopa's comprehensive urban community college district, Elsner stressed that most other community colleges look quite different than Maricopa. "Community colleges are not a monolith." Rather, there are many types of institutions with different charters, different enabling legislation, different constituencies, and different financing. "There are more differences than observers acknowledge," he said.

For instance, states like California, Minnesota and Hawaii provide 80 percent or more of the budgets for their community colleges; Arizona and other states provide a much smaller contribution. While many institutions cling to the initial mission of two-year colleges -- transfer to 4-year colleges and universities -- others transfer very few students and instead concentrate on technical and vocational education.

Issues facing community colleges. Despite their diversity, Elsner noted several common challenges confronting community colleges nationwide.

Far more than universities, community colleges' missions and goals are highly sensitive to financing. Whereas budget cuts at a university might result in slight changes in a graduate department, cuts at two-year college lead directly to cancelled classes and ill-equipped laboratories.
Community colleges are only now learning to be involved with problems in their local communities and with the broader social agenda. Community colleges must build better coalitions. They must relate better to community-based organizations, and they must take a leadership role in helping to sort out and reduce duplication among job training, youth, social services, and education reform programs. Dropout rates in Phoenix are 30 percent. "It's like excising your future."
Community colleges must learn from the quality movement in industry to become more responsive and customer-driven. Community college officials -- like those in public schools, universities, and local government -- have become entitled, privileged, tenured and secure at a time when the rest of the economy and society is scrambling for survival.
Community colleges must work to adapt to the increasing diversity of American society. Community colleges are "the doorstep of tumultuous movement of people throughout the world," Elsner said. Increasing numbers of community college students are immigrants. "We don't have well-perfected programs to deal with that level of diversity."

Dr. Cathryn Addy

Tunxis Community-Technical College, in rural Farmington, Conn., is far smaller than Maricopa and less wide-ranging in its activities. Tunxis president Dr. Cathryn Addy, who is also the 1994 president of the American Association of Community Colleges President's Academy, explained that Connecticut's 12 community college campuses together serve 45,000 students each year -- one half of the state's higher education students.

Differences among community colleges. Addy reflected that the differences between Tunxis and Maricopa were typical of the great diversity that exists nationwide among two-year colleges. Each college reflects the conditions of its community, and each therefore has "a distinct flavor." This diversity often leads to problems when federal programs and mandates assume that all two-year colleges conform to a single model.

Averting an identity crisis. Two-year colleges face the challenge of retaining their identity as a point of entry for university education while assuming a vast array of new responsibilities -- career and vocational education, job training and retraining, basic skills remediation, and continuing education.

The college transfer curriculum is "still the majority of what we do, but it's the last thing we talk about." Continuing education courses are taking away from community colleges' image by creating "a basket weaving mentality" -- a perception that two-year colleges are not a place of higher learning.

Student diversity. Community college students often do not resemble the traditional college student: most have spent time in the labor market before enrolling, and many continue to work while enrolled. Community college students average 30 years old, 70 percent are female, half attend classes only part-time, and many are minority. At least half of all minority students in higher education attend community colleges.

Federal student aid policies often fail to comprehend the needs and realities of community colleges' nontraditional student population. Due to financial needs and family responsibilities, many students drop in and out of community colleges; and some can take eight or ten years to complete a two-year degree. Yet such students are often ineligible under federal financial aid regulations, and the federal requirements for community colleges to document student progress can be expensive and onerous.

Outdated technology. Many community colleges struggle in acquiring and maintaining up-to-date (or at least not obsolete) technology. Lack of resources is the major cause of the problem, sometimes exacerbated by resistance to change. "The reason there is no museum of educational technology is that we're still using it all," she said.

Regulation and Reporting Requirements. Community colleges are caught between two conflicting government impulses: on one side is the drive to reform government by cutting regulation and red tape; on the other side is the impulse to protect consumers by increasing demands for accountability and information.

"You can't have it both ways," Addy said. Despite the rhetoric of reinventing government, community colleges are being hit with ever-increasing reporting requirements. These mandates exacerbate the resource constraints of community colleges, draining administrators' time and energy from the business of education, and costing money the colleges don't have.

Often colleges are faced with horrible choices: "Do I fight for dollars to hire another financial aid officer to comply with new regulatory requirements, or do I use the money to hire tutors for language-deficient immigrant students? Do I hire someone to make sure my college is complying with the Americans With Disabilities Act, or do I hire someone who can teach math or English or computer skills?"

Compliance vs. Creativity? Often the multiplicity of regulations and the scarcity of resources leads to an unproductive atmosphere where competition for resources takes the place of collaboration and compliance takes the place of creativity.

Suggestions for Federal Policy. Addy offered a series of suggestions to federal policymakers:

avoid broad brush policies toward community colleges that punish the innocent. Grant community colleges some flexibility, and allow them to adapt programs to local and regional needs.
continue to provide financial aid for community and technical college education. Boost funding for Pell Grants to reverse the erosion of that program's support. Expand funding for dislocated workers.
include community college leaders in national policy-making discussions. The needs, interests and expertise of community college administrators are far different than those of university educators. Yet community colleges tend to be lumped with universities as "higher education" and not given their rightful place in debates over federal policy.

Discussion Period

Elsner and Addy answered questions on a broad range of subjects:

Accountability. How can colleges can be held accountable for their use of public dollars without creating undue reporting burden? An institution that's doing its job has no problem being asked to document its results, Addy responded. But we want to be involved in deciding what has to be documented.

What about financial aid for proprietary schools, some of which have very high default rates for student loans? Addy responded that some proprietary schools are abusing financial aid, but other schools are very good. "Those people who have proven themselves to be charlatans, there has to be some way to get them out of the business." Elsner noted that 80 percent of the loan defaults in Arizona come from 20 percent of the proprietary schools.

Program Responsiveness. Asked how his college ensures that its programs stay responsive to changing economic conditions, Elsner described the elaborate system of advisory groups, focus groups, and market studies Maricopa uses to modify and improve its programs on an ongoing basis.

Addy added that federal rules sometimes make it difficult to respond to industry requirements. Some federal retraining programs only subsidize job-specific courses and not basic skills courses like English Composition that are necessary to earn a vocational degree or certificate and are increasingly demanded in the workplace. Many employers now say that they will provide technical skills training if the community college will develop workers' foundation of transferable basic skills.

Image. One participant concurred that community colleges suffer from an image problem. He noted that under the U.S. Higher Education Act, if a 4-year college student's parents both attended community college, he or she is considered a "first generation" college student. He suggested that part of the image problem is community colleges' own making: by talking so much about nontraditional students (older students, parents, dislocated workers, etc.), community colleges create the impression that they are more different than 4-year colleges than is actually the case. The median age of community college students is only 23, he said, and only one in four community college students has children.

Addy: "Community colleges are like middle children, trying to attach ourselves to what's best about older children and still trying to carve out a unique identity."

Tech Prep. One effect of this image problem is that many community colleges feel an aversion to working with primary and secondary schools for fear of being too closely associated with them, Elsner said. Maricopa is involved in four Tech Prep programs, and Elsner argued that "Tech Prep is vitally important to American education in making it more seamless."

Addy noted that her college has an innovative program for 10th grade students ranked in the bottom third of their class. Those who pass a test are allowed to enroll in two college classes per semester. By participating in the program, they can earn 24 college credits by the time they graduate high school.

Federal Aid. How well do federal programs meet the needs of community colleges? Elsner offered a mixed response. His college is not eager to participate in heavily regulated programs like JTPA, but it has been successful in recent years winning support from the National Science Foundation. Elsner suggested that federal funds could have a greater impact if regulations for categorical programs were loosened and states were instead required to coordinate now isolated programs into a coherent state plan.

This brief summarizes an American Youth Policy Forum that took place on April 8, 1994 on Capitol Hill, reported by Dick Mendel.

The American Youth Policy Forum (AYPF) is a non-profit, nonpartisan professional development organization that bridges youth policy, practice and research for professionals working on youth policy issues at the national, state and local levels.