This imbalance in the national conversation is particularly troubling because community colleges disproportionately serve students from urban communities, first-generation students, working adults, and students from historically underrepresented populations. These institutions were created to expand access to opportunity. However, access without intentional preparation and sustained support often leads students directly into the very barriers higher education claims it wants to remove.
Recently, during a conversation with a Vice President of Enrollment Management and several academic deans, the discussion centered on why students were struggling in gateway courses such as mathematics, English composition, biology, and history. The conversation repeatedly returned to whether students were academically prepared for college-level work. At one point, two questions were asked of the administrators:
What are the top feeder high schools your students graduate from?
What work are you doing with those schools to prepare students before they arrive on your campus?
No one in the room could answer either question.
That moment represented a larger national problem in higher education. Institutions possess years of enrollment, persistence, and gateway course data, yet many fail to use it to build meaningful partnerships with the schools and communities from which their students come. Instead, colleges wait until students arrive underprepared, then attempt to remediate barriers after students have already begun struggling academically, financially, and emotionally.
