Collins community credit union

It is both the best of times and the worst of times for America's community colleges. In the 100 years since their creation, these colleges have spread across the United States to become the largest sector of higher education, representing nearly 1,200 regionally accredited institutions within commuting distance of over 90 percent of the population. Student enrollment has grown to over 6.5 million students enrolled for credit--almost half (45 percent) of the total number of undergraduates in the United States. When noncredit students are added in, more than 11.5 million students take classes at community colleges each year.

With their open-door admissions policy, the colleges are often described as the people's or democracy's colleges and are widely credited with opening access to higher education to the most diverse student body in the history of higher education. As a uniquely American innovation in postsecondary learning, community colleges are widely emulated in countries around the globe.

In many ways, community colleges have come of age. They have changed the paradigm of higher education in the United States from students having to "go away" to college to having access to affordable higher learning and job training right in their local communities. Community colleges place emphasis on being both reflective of, and responsive to, their local communities. Thus, they play a critical role in the security and well-being of those communities, educating close to 60 percent of new nurses and 80 percent of firefighters, law enforcement officers, and other first responders.

Community college alumni represent all fields of endeavor, including such notables as Eileen Collins, NASA's first female mission commander; Dr. J. Craig Venter, a lead scientist in decoding the human genome; U.S. Surgeon General Richard Carmona; former Congressman and NAACP President Kweisi Mfume; journalist Jim Lehrer; Academy Award-winning actor Dustin Hoffman; Nobel Prize winning chemist Bruce Merrifield; and Olympic speed skater Bonnie Blair.

Beyond their primarily local focus, community colleges increasingly are viewed as a national network and a key national resource. In his 2004 State of the Union address, President Bush announced a new $250 million job training initiative to encourage community colleges to work with businesses to provide job training in high-growth industries. Other political leaders from former President Clinton to Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan have lauded the colleges' key role as workforce providers and as an economic engine for the nation.

Despite such highly visible public support, the nation's community colleges now face unprecedented challenges. In the past three years, student enrollment pressure has escalated, and college leaders have struggled to meet demand in the face of steep state budget cuts, limited facilities, faculty turnover, rising technology costs, and increasing numbers of students who need remedial work before they can take college-level classes. Community colleges in areas with plant closures--such as Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Colorado, Maryland, Ohio, New Jersey, Washington, and Kansas--reported double-digit increases in enrollment last year. While several states and individual colleges have been successful in winning voter approval of bond issues to renovate or build new facilities, operational budgets, as a result of deteriorating state economies, have been in a tailspin. All of these pressures signal a "perfect storm."

Community colleges' enrollment pressures are driven by multiple factors. Historically, their enrollments have increased during economic downturns as the unemployed and under-employed turned to community colleges as the path to a better future. Now, higher education is beginning to experience the leading edge of a bulge in the population of traditional-aged college students (18-to-24-year-olds)--the children of Baby Boomers and new immigrants. What's more, the percentage of high school graduates who attend college has increased from 50 percent in 1980 to over 66 percent today. The U.S. Department of Education projects that by 2009, 75 percent of high school seniors will likely attend college. Students and their families understand that education beyond high school is more necessary than ever to be successful in today's world (see Chart 1).

The escalating enrollments at community colleges are also being sparked by the increased enrollment of students who already have college degrees. Twenty-eight percent of community colleges' non-credit students have a Bachelor's degree or higher, while over a quarter of part-time community college students enrolled for credit have some form of postsecondary credential. In order to stay competitive in today's volatile economy, people are using community colleges to gain practical, marketable employment skills; they are recognizing that lifelong learning is an economic necessity for staying employed or becoming re-employed.

Recent spikes in community college enrollments also have been fueled by significant tuition and fee increases in universities. Especially in today's economic environment, many students and their families turn to nearby community colleges to complete lower-division coursework before transferring to a university, resulting in significant cost savings.

Completing lower-division coursework at a community college is also much less expensive for the state. This fact led to California's proposing to divert some freshmen from the University of California (UC) to the state's community colleges for the freshman and sophomore years, with a guarantee of transfer to UC campuses. Diverting freshmen university students to community colleges, of course, adds even more enrollment pressure on these institutions.

At the same time that community colleges are faced with historic enrollment demands, they are struggling with severe budget cuts. Data from the Grapevines Project at Illinois State University found that state funding for public community colleges dropped by nearly $584.8 million between 2002-2003 and 2003-2004, with 22 states--44 percent--reporting decreased funding. The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education has reported that elected state officials often view support of higher education as more discretionary than funding for other public programs. This attitude stems largely from the fact that students can be charged tuition for the services they receive, unlike other recipients of state funds, such as public school students or prison inmates.

When state finances are tight, higher education budgets are often cut disproportionately. To make matters worse, community colleges often absorb a disproportionate share of the higher education budget cuts. While funding policies vary by state, community colleges are the segment of higher education most reliant on public funding. Nationally, the institutions receive an average of 60 percent of their revenue from state and local funds compared to an average of only 35 percent at public four-year institutions.

Thus, community college leaders are struggling to meet accelerating demand with declining public resources. Many colleges and systems have responded by increasing tuition. After several years of relatively stable tuition levels, tuition went up by 7.9 percent in the fall of 2002 and 13.8 percent in the fall of 2003. Still, tuition accounts for only 21 percent of community college budgets, and, in some states, institutions are enrolling significant numbers of students for whom they receive no state support (see Chart 2).

This shortfall results from multiple factors, including the fact that per-student formula funding has decreased in many states or has not kept pace with enrollment demands. In addition, many states do not reimburse remedial or noncredit studies, both areas where community colleges have experienced continued growth. Stretched to the limit, the 109 community colleges in California turned away about 175,000 prospective students last fall, while an estimated 35,000 went unserved in Florida.

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