RICHMOND Va. – Community college leaders in Virginia and other states say their schools’ roles in giving students an affordable education and job training are undervalued, so they’re banding together to fight for federal policy changes.
Virginia Community College System Chancellor Glenn DuBois and his counterparts in Louisiana, North Carolina and Indiana have formed Rebuilding the Middle Class. The coalition, which held its first meeting last week in the group’s home base of Indianapolis, is raising money in hopes of building its profile among the public and with lawmakers.
“We were seen as high schools with ashtrays we weren’t real,” DuBois said. “The perception was that this was the place to go if you couldn’t get into college.”
That has changed as more employers now require a post-secondary education while the costs for attending four-year schools have skyrocketed. The two-year schools are typically far less-expensive to attend and serve as an interim step for many students between high school and four-year colleges and universities.
Community colleges in particular have seen a growing number of low-income and minority students attain credentials, associate’s degrees and workforce certificates over the past two decades.
Joe May, president of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System, heads the new group. He said that although community colleges have become more important in recent decades, federal policies and programs created to aid students including grant and loan funding haven’t grown accordingly.
“Since the Pell Grant was created in the 1970s, they haven’t fundamentally changed, but students really have changed,” May said. “In the 1970s, the majority attending college were young and lived on campus. Students today are much older, a majority are working while going to school and half of undergraduate enrollment is at community colleges.”
