Community colleges got a much-anticipated afternoon in the national spotlight last week when President Obama and Jill Biden, wife of the vice president and a community-college instructor herself, led the first White House Summit on Community Colleges.
The president opened the meeting, attended by officials from some of the nation’s 1,200 community colleges along with leaders from business and philanthropy, by calling community colleges the “unsung heroes” of America’s education system and emphasizing the crucial role they play in keeping the country competitive.
“These are places where young people can continue their education without taking on a lot of debt,” Mr. Obama said. “These are places where workers can gain new skills to move up in their careers.”
Several new national efforts to improve community colleges and expand their programs were announced at the summit.
They include a public-private partnership linking major companies, including the Gap and McDonald’s, with community colleges to improve job training; a $35-million competitive grant program, financed by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to increase the graduation rates of community-college students; and a $1-million annual Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence to reward colleges that demonstrate outstanding results in their academic and work-force-training roles.
While many community-college leaders welcomed the summit and the attention it brought to their institutions, which educate almost half of the nation’s undergraduates, some viewed the event as a sort of consolation prize.
Faculty members, particularly adjuncts, criticized their limited presence at the meeting, arguing that the summit could not seriously address community colleges’ role in achieving national college-completion goals without significant and direct input from the non-tenure-track instructors who make up most of the professoriate on those campuses.
Disorganized Effort?
A number of people criticized the White House for the way it prepared for the summit, saying its efforts seemed disorganized, with basic details like invitation lists coming together only at the last minute. That led critics to question the administration’s commitment to the sector.
President Obama made community colleges a centerpiece of his higher-education agenda shortly after he took office, proposing a $12-billion program that would rebuild community-college facilities; increase the number of students who graduate and transfer to four-year colleges; improve remedial education; create stronger ties between colleges and employers; and start inexpensive, open-source courses for students to take online. It would be, he said, the most historic effort on behalf of community colleges since President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the GI Bill, in 1944.
Now, a year after the president proposed his plan, it is in ruins. It was gutted during negotiations over legislation to overhaul student aid and the nation’s health-care system, with the final legislation leaving community colleges with only a $2-billion career-training program, under the Department of Labor.
When the president signed the bill, in March, he did so on a community-college campus and made a point of praising two-year institutions, announcing that the White House would hold the summit in the fall. But a date was not set until mid-September.
There is evidence that community-college leaders were not consulted on the summit’s agenda but rather offered an opportunity to provide feedback on several topics that the administration had already chosen to focus on.
The White House did set up a blog on its Web site, inviting thoughts and questions for the summit, but that was just three weeks before the meeting. Some invitations were sent to participants just a few days before the summit, and one invitee said he was told the day before that his invitation was being withdrawn.
Some of the participants who were scheduled to speak at the event’s breakout sessions, when contacted by a reporter less than a week before the summit, said they didn’t know which sessions they were assigned to attend, making it hard to prepare remarks and contribute thoughtfully to the discussion.
“It sounds to me that the summit is just a piece of public relations,” said Betsy Smith, who has taught English as a second language at Cape Cod Community College.
Regardless of the criticism, most participants said they appreciated the fact that the summit would put community colleges into the spotlight and give participants ample opportunity to put forth their ideas about how community colleges can meet the president’s college-completion goal. He wants five million more community-college graduates to earn certificates or degrees by 2020.
Looking for Respect
Participants also hoped that the sector could finally shed what some have referred to as its “Rodney Dangerfield” image and gain more respect for its work. Community colleges educate about 11 million students nationwide, with over half of them taking for-credit classes that lead to degrees or certificates.
Casey Maliszewski, a 26-year-old graduate student at Columbia University who was invited to the summit, said community college not only made it possible for her to attend college but also influenced her current graduate studies in educational policy. She had been set to attend a four-year university but changed her mind when she realized she couldn’t afford the student-loan debt she would need to take on.
Instead she enrolled at Raritan Valley Community College, in her native New Jersey, and went on to earn a bachelor’s degree at Mount Holyoke College. “There is really no limit to what you can accomplish at a community college,” she said. “There is an unfortunate stigma associated with community colleges, but I think that is breaking down. Look at me. I was able to go on to an Ivy League school.”
One of the main goals of the summit was to delve into particular issues facing community colleges. Participants took part in six sessions, on topics that included making college affordable, increasing graduation rates, and supporting military veterans. At the session on affordability, the discussion centered on the frustrations of nontraditional students who, because of their part-time academic and full-time work status, are ineligible for federal aid.
George R. Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges, said the summit’s success would hinge on what happened after the participants left the White House and went back to their day jobs.
“I hope this is not just a one-time event,” he said, “but that it will affect policy down the road.”
