Shifting Community Culture

Twitter Blog #2, Gardner EPS 518

For my twitter blog I read the article “Community College Students Face a Very Long Road to Graduation” by Ginia Bellafante. This powerful piece exposed the challenges of one of the 7.7 Million students enrolled in community colleges across the US. Vladimir de Jesus dreams of becoming an Art Professor, but finds himself facing many of the common obstacles to completing an education at a community college in the US.

This article demonstrates the impact community colleges can have on low income students, parents, and people pursuing nontraditional educational pursuits. However, it also clearly shows the attention these schools need, as they clearly do not fit in the mold of higher education they are placed in. Often seen as remedial and vocational based, after reading this article it is apparent that there is a larger cultural problem in the ability of these colleges to obtain financial support.

Much of the problems I have experienced on campus at UW relate to increasing diversity at large universities like UW-Madison, or peer institutions. Community Colleges are rarely a part of the discussion, while they clearly should be. If our society seeks to address the immense income gap in educational attainment (which is a growing problem; Bailey and Dynarski 2o11), community colleges must be a core part of this change.

I believe that while resolving funding issues and remodeling graduation requirements are necessary, first steps need to be taken to educate young people on the benefits (and dispel the myths) surrounding community colleges. When these schools are not seen as a viable option for future success, they lose out on funding and develop a stigma that unfairly punishes these students. As well, they become subject to policies that harm the education community colleges offer.

A proposal I would suggest to begin to change this culture would be to integrate ‘big name’ schools with community colleges, and pool funding in a way that would increase the reputation of community colleges, while providing more efficient use of resources. For example, while the University of Wisconsin system has a variety of community colleges in the state, serving a wider variety of income levels, UW-Madison is unfortunately relatively independent from these schools. It would likely increase the reputation and ability of these schools to innovate if UW-Madison students worked closer with community college students and faculty. As well, students at large universities would develop a better understanding of the role and impact of community colleges, allowing them to educate future students about these opportunities, and address the stigma.

Bettinger, Long and Boatman 2013 shows evidence that because these institutions are often resource constrained, they have difficulty in providing adequate supports for students from non-traditional backgrounds like de Jesus. They also review a variety of ‘best practices’ of which evidence for success is limited. They attribute much of this to a lack of resources for institutions and their students. Perhaps strengthening collaboration between local community colleges and larger statewide institutions would increase flexibility for these students (through online courses, advising resources, and remediation support groups or coaching opportunities). These steps have been shown to increase the ability of ‘nontraditional’ students to complete their degrees. As well, more community college collaboration with larger schools would have the added impact of an improved perspective of the role of community colleges, and could increase future levels of funding. If successful, this would apply to both the student attending the community college (who would view their education more positively at the community college) and the student attending the large institution (who would work with more community college students and view this alternative education as more legitimate in future success, with the added benefit of a more diverse learning environment). For example, this might encourage a graduate to be comfortable with putting a community college they transferred from on their resume in addition to their graduating institution, given that both institutions were critical to their obtaining an education. It is also possible that this collaboration would allow the students at community colleges access to the wider array of resources and networking opportunities (mentioned in Bettinger as corporate collaborations etc) that have been shown to improve success following graduation.

In relation to the article, I could imagine a situation where LaGuardia Community College closely aligns with a major New York university, to provide more educational opportunities for ‘coaching,’ which the article suggested improved graduation rates. As well, these shared resources would allow students with challenges to a traditional degree program to have a wider array of options for learning, such as online courses and independent tutoring programs, enabling them to better overcome obstacles to educational success such as parenting and working full time.

Obviously, I recognize that this would be incredibly difficult to undertake and incentivize schools to do. I believe because of this it would take a massive policy undertaking to over time improve the reputation of these community colleges. I would posit that over time this change would improve the culture, and thereby improve the support for community colleges. I would also be interested in a discussion of what has been attempted similar to this, and what major drawbacks to this reform would be that are not addressed here.