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Education Dive
Report:
Policymakers 'systematically shortchange' community colleges
James Paterson
April 25, 2019
Dive Brief:
Policymakers have left community colleges strikingly underfunded
compared to four-year institutions and as a result have made it more
difficult for them to serve their 9 million largely lower-income
students, according to a new study by The Century Foundation.
The report explains that two-year colleges face a crisis as they
struggle with chronic poor performance by their students, on whom they
spend about $14,000 each per year. Private research institutions,
meanwhile, spend three times that amount, not including research
functions.
The report calls for more funding, including from the federal
government, along with better research to establish what improvements
to community college will cost and how they will pay off.
Dive Insight:
The report paints a stark portrait of the nation's support for
community colleges, and its authors don't mince words, writing that
policymakers have "systematically shortchanged" them. Richard
Kahlenberg, executive director of The Century Foundation's Working
Group on Community College Financial Resources, said the nation is
"starving" them of necessary funding while "asking them to do
increasingly more with increasingly less, and robbing them of their
potential to serve as ladders into the middle class."
It notes that from 2004 to 2014, per-student spending on education grew
by 4% at community colleges compared to 16% at four-year public
colleges. State and local funding shrank from 64% of two-year colleges'
funds to 52% during that period, while tuition's portion increased from
22% to 33%.
State spending cuts have a "more pronounced" effect on community
colleges than public four-year institutions, causing them to cut their
instructional spending nearly twice as much — about 56 cents on each
dollar lost, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank
of Boston.
As The Century Foundation's report notes, increased funding is
attributed to better student outcomes. However, just 38% of community
college students complete a degree or certificate in six years and only
15% transfer even though 81% say they intend to do so, its authors
found.
With state funding tight, several proposals to increase it have tied
the additional dollars to student outcomes. One such recommendation
comes from the Aspen Institute, which in a policy paper earlier this
year suggested a $22 billion infusion of performance-based funding for
community colleges.
Its authors say the move would result in 3.6 million more students
earning a college degree and another 28 million workers upgrading their
skills. The outcomes would be based on whether students graduate and
find gainful employment, while the distribution of funds would consider
the local labor market and students' own economic conditions.
Community colleges themselves have moved to improve outcomes, using a
combination of tactics such as guided pathways toward careers or
transfers to four-year institution, wraparound support services to help
with students' needs outside of the classroom, and efforts to reenroll
students who dropped out.
Education Dive
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