A Call to reinvest in our community colleges

Most community colleges students come from the bottom half of the socioeconomic ladder, and enter their college studies with hopes of social mobility. Yet these colleges receive much less federal and state funding and spend far less per student than four-year institutions. The effects of this underfunding can be seen in completion rates: Only 38 percent of the 9 million students who enter community college complete a degree or certificate within six years.

Those are among the findings of a new report titled Recommendations for Providing Community Colleges with the Resources They Need by the Century Foundation’s Working Group on Community College Financial Resources. Composed of 20 education experts, the working group includes Tatiana Melguizo, a faculty member at the Pullias Center and an associate professor at USC Rossier.

Other major points of the report are:

• The majority of community college students come from the bottom half of the socioeconomic distribution and bring with them significant educational needs. Yet, private research universities, educating a more affluent population, spend three times as much per student as community colleges on non-research educational functions, and public research universities spend 60 percent more.
• Given strong evidence that greater spending increases outcomes for students, states should boost funding for community colleges and federal policymakers should create a new federal–state partnership to further support two-year institutions.
• Policymakers and foundations should fund research to answer a basic question: What level of funding could produce adequate community college education outcomes—increasing the likelihood of students beginning and completing two-year programs and going on to earn a middle-class wage? Such funding studies are commonplace at the K–12 level, and similar community college research could improve decisions about where, and how much, to invest in community colleges.