Thinking and Linking by Joanne Jacobs
The University of Phoenix will roll out more than 100 new partnerships with community colleges in the coming year. The nation’s largest for-profit university will offer bachelor’s degree programs to two-year graduates, gaining students who are more likely to graduate and repay their student loans.
Under increasing regulatory scrutiny, the University of Phoenix has seen enrollment drop precipitously from a peak near 500,000 to 320,000.
As higher education struggles to recover from the recession, colleges and universities are trying to serve more students with less money. Higher ed’s poorest sector, community colleges suffered the greatest financial hardship, concludes the Delta Cost Project. Overall, college students are paying a higher percentage of the cost of their education.
Community colleges are real colleges that provide a low-cost path to a bachelor’s degree, not just job training centers.
Two Boston community colleges will partner with edX, Harvard and MIT’s online learning venture, on a “blended” computer science class. Three MIT professors will teach the online course; community college professors will provide classroom instruction and support.
What’s ahead for higher ed in the next four years? President Obama pledged to link federal aid to colleges’ willingness to cut the rate of tuition growth, but was that just campaign rhetoric?
California community colleges will use new tax revenue to add classes and reduce wait lists.
With weak academic skills and little “college knowledge,” community college students need structure, block scheduling and better teaching, writes Aspen Institute’s Josh Wyner.
“Student success” courses, also known as College 101, need to improve to have long-term impacts on students’ persistence, concludes a new study.
Community colleges’ mission is learning, not just job training, a professor writes. No other sector of higher education gives low-income and working-class people “a legitimate shot at upward mobility.”
Short-term job training is growing at community colleges. In Minneapolis, laid-off workers can find good manufacturing jobs with 16 to 18 weeks of Right Skills Now training.
On many community college campuses, “corruption, cronyism, abuse of power, and fiefdom-building constitute business as usual,” writes Rob Jenkins, a Georgia Perimeter College English professor. Feudalism and Soviet-style dictatorship are the most common governance models, he writes.
Facing the loss of accreditation for mismanagement, City College of San Francisco has proposed an improvement plan that includes spending less on enrichment classes and collecting $400,000 a year in unpaid tuition.
With 470,000 students on community college wait lists in California, UniversityNow, a “social venture” in San Francisco, is offering online general-education classes at community college prices. UNow recently bought accredited (though on probation) Patten University, which will issue what should be transferable credits.
Meanwhile, one community college in California is looking for donors to ”sponsor” classes the college can’t afford to teach.
California community colleges will give enrollment priority to students who set academic or vocational goals. “Professional students” who’ve attended for years without completing a credential will go to the end of the line and may be shut out of classes.
One district already is working to ensure high school graduates will have a place in college classes.
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