Politicians and policymakers are lavishing unprecedented attention on community colleges, promoting them as engines to train workers in the recession and boost the country’s college graduation rates.
Where rhetoric meets reality on campus, you’ll find people like Tania DeLeon, a student at Folsom Lake College in California who can’t get into the classes she wants, must shuttle between two campuses 45 minutes apart and is spending spring break earning a paycheck so she can pay for gas and graduate on time.
Grappling with soaring enrollment and plummeting state support, community colleges are grateful for the higher profile but disappointed money has yet to materialize to help them keep up with demand, let alone meet ambitious Obama administration goals to make the U.S. the global leader in college graduates again by 2020.
“It’s a difficult, challenging time for us,” said George Boggs, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges. “But in the longer term view, we’ve never seen the image of community colleges as high as it is right now. Overall, I’m optimistic for the future.”
No longer the afterthought of higher education, the nation’s 1,200 community, technical and junior colleges enroll more than 6 million students – almost half the nation’s college population. Public colleges’ open-door policies and low fees draw many low-income, first-generation, immigrant and Hispanic students.
The economic downturn has pressured both schools and their students, most of whom work long hours. Sinking tax revenues at state and local levels have forced public colleges to cut courses or schedule them around the clock, slash summer sessions, eliminate academic programs and even restrict enrollment.
In Detroit, record demand prompted the Wayne County Community College District to cap student enrollment this spring for the first time in its 40-year history. Louisiana’s community and technical colleges, facing a 4.5 percent state budget cut, have slashed 100 academic programs in the past year.
