Community colleges are drawing more students to job-oriented programs, fewer to classes that lead to an academic degree, reports Joshua Bay on The 74.
A new report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows a 16 percent enrollment gain for community colleges with a vocational focus, usually known as technical colleges, while transfer-focused community colleges inched up by 0.2 percent and remain below pre-pandemic levels.
Popular programs include computer science, business and health.
Most jobs that pay middle-class wages still require a bachelor's degree, says Josh Wyner, founder and executive director of the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program. It's "troubling" to see fewer young people in the pipeline.
However, deciding to pursue a job credential may be "entirely rational," he concedes. “If a student leaves [a four-year] college without a degree or with a degree that didn’t give them a better life than they would have had if they never attended, they’re going to go back to their communities and when people ask if it was worth it their answer is going to be no.”