Giving Consideration to Community Colleges

There have been jokes circulating the internet about how in the show Community the students have been at a community college for 5 years, laughable right? But for some people this is their reality, and their reality is not filled with campus wide nerf gun fights and comedic situations, but tough situations over the choice of their future.

The New York Times article about the long path to graduation for community college students touches on a very important issue. Community college students many times look different, and therefore have different objectives than that of the “average” college student. They have families, are older, are returning, live at home, or just wish to learn and not earn a degree. There are also a multitude of other traits that these students carry that make them unique to the American institution of higher ed. This can make graduation, completion of classes, paying back loans, and time to a degree a much more difficult undertaking for these students, if they wish to do these things at all.

So how do we account for these students on the federal, state, and school level? In our readings they offer some remedies to these problems. Rosenbaum suggests that community colleges stop trying to track students into traditional BA that they may not be prepared for, and to be more realistic with students. But, when many are looking at BA’s to be the only degree with financial returns worth the opportunity cost, can you really blame counselors for pushing students towards BA programs? ACE answers how to do this by doing more research on these institutions, since little its consistent across them and little research is being done. This can help students and curriculum for these school on how to work with these students. Carnevale and Strohl answer this by saying that we should fund more to these minority serving institutions, even though they may have failing graduation and time to completion rates because of the special consideration of the communities they serve.

Let us consider Mr. de Jesus. Would he benefit from any of these strategies? He has came to LaGuardia to earn a major in fine arts with plans to transfer and gain his BA or MA as a final result. With this plan in mind, would pushing him away from these programs encourage him to complete and graduate from LaGuardia? I would argue that it would probably do the opposite. Without the prospect of a BA or MA in his future resulting from his time at LaGuardia, why would he have any incentive to stay, especially a he says, when there are jobs available for $15.00 an hour without a college degree. So maybe Rosenbaum’s argument is flawed because it fails to realize that these BA transfer programs may be the only reason some of these students are at these community colleges, and therefore wouldn’t be there at all if it wasn’t for their existence.

Would data and research help Mr. de Jesus? Probably not, considering that he didn’t choose LaGuardia for it’s esteem or lack thereof, but more so for its location. The one piece of research that may be able to help him is more based in the structuring of the curriculum, such as the Carnegie plan to restructure math programs. This restructuring could lead to higher graduation rates, and hypothetically less time to a degree because of less failing and retaking of classes.

How would funding affect Mr. de Jesus’ experience? If he was able to get more funding, and possibly even living expenses grants, he may not have had to drop out for several years. Increased institutional funding could also lead to better mentorship, direct counseling, and tutoring, services that are available to struggling students at high endowment private institutions. While it is not for sure that funding would go towards these sources if given directly to community colleges, many of these institutions know the needs of their campuses and would direct the funds to the proper channels.

So how do we solve the problem of low graduation rates and high time to completion rates at universities? I would say a restructuring of the curriculum would be beneficial to meet the special needs of these students. Many students do not come to earn degrees, so structuring the curriculum this traditional way is not beneficial to these students. I would also be hesitant to tie funding for these institutions to graduation rates, the way some 4 year institutions are because of the special needs of these students. Grants for living expenses, and funding for special programs aimed at helping struggling students advance should be central for these institutions. We need to serve the special needs of these students to change their realities.