Why Are Community Colleges Getting an "F"?

 

Maybe it’s just a reflection of the declining quality of our overall high school performance. Perhaps it is partially a loss engendered by those students who fell behind during the COVID lockdown/virtual classes. But with a recession all but certain, with the Federal Reserve suggesting that one of their rate-hike goals is to raise the unemployment rate to stem inflation, the bargain of free or virtually free community college tuition just might be more a waste of time and taxpayer money, if the viability of a community college associates degree continues to decrease.

For many, with grades not quite high enough to get into a serious four-year undergraduate program, community colleges often have become “improving and reproving” grounds that open the door to a junior/senior year transfer. For others, it’s a way of cutting tuition costs. Here in Los Angeles, for example, Santa Monica Community College still performs reasonably well in that capacity, but increasingly, that’s the exception. For those seeking a degree in a marketable trade, however, community colleges are overall doing particularly badly and getting worse.

We lack STEM expertise from top to bottom. Our immigration barriers to qualified engineers, mathematicians and scientists make us less competitive, just as other countries (Canada, UK, France, etc.) open their doors to that expertise. For a nation based on technical entrepreneurship, this lapse is just plain scary. But make no mistake, the lack of qualified middle-skill STEM workers is serious. We already know of the issues with “for profit” trade schools, but are taxpayers getting their money’s worth with their community colleges? Generally, “no.”

A Harvard Business school study (released December 12th) – The Partnership Imperative: Community Colleges, Employers, and America’s Chronic Skills Gap – led by Professor Joseph Fuller and Manjari Raman, Program Director and Senior Researcher for the Project on Managing the Future of Work, explores the depth of the problem. The executive summary set the stage: “Employers complain they cannot find the talent they need—in terms of quantity, quality, and diversity. Critical middle-skills positions go unfilled. Revenues are lost, and customers are dissatisfied. Costs mount with overtime and turnover, and morale declines due to overwork.

“At the same time, some students come out of the community college system only to find that they are unemployable in their field of study or at a living wage. Employers do not find them ‘workforce ready’ and capable of carrying out the more sophisticated technology-promoted tasks associated with middle-skills positions. Too often armed with outdated credentials and burdened with student debt, these graduates discover that they lack the technical and foundational skills needed to secure positions to which they had aspired.

“For their part, educators struggle to get employers engaged—in curriculum development; in gaining access to information on how technical and foundational skills for middle-skills positions are changing; in attracting skilled advisers and faculty members to serve at community colleges; and in acquiring the latest equipment and software licenses. Educators also face high hurdles when seeking internships and apprenticeships from local businesses. Real-life work-based learning experiences for community college students are rarely available and often unpaid… The net result is a middle-skills environment in disequilibrium, underserving the needs of aspiring workers, employers, and ultimately, communities.”

Extracting the essence of the report and writing for the December 18th FastCompany.com, Sam Becker puts it this way: “The report finds that though community colleges have traditionally served as a ‘middle skills’ talent pipeline, they often produce graduates who lack the skills or know-how that employers need—even as companies have millions of positions that sit unfilled. While there are roughly 12.4 million community college students attending nearly 1,200 institutions around the country, a disconnect between what community colleges think employers need and what those employers actually say they need is creating a state of ‘disequilibrium, underserving the needs of aspiring workers, employers, and, ultimately, communities,’ according to the report.

“‘The disconnect is evident in the data: Only 36% of employers agree that community colleges produce work-ready employees. Only 26% strongly agree… Community colleges are supposed to be this portal—giving people an affordable opportunity, near where they live, to develop skills or start down the path to a four-year institution, says Joseph Fuller… He says that while many schools do a good job of aligning their curriculums and programs with the needs of local employers, such schools are often the exception, even though ‘everyone [talks] a great game.’

“Ultimately, what’s happened as a result of employers losing faith in community colleges to produce work-ready graduates is that they’ve turned to other sources of talent. Community colleges have, as a result, ‘lost ground’ to other sources, Fuller says. For instance, some companies have started working directly with schools to create training programs.

“Despite calls for expanded access to community college programs from some policymakers—including a free, universal community college plan put together by the Biden administration that has since been tabled—the numbers do show that community colleges are experiencing problems getting students through to graduation. Fuller says that only 30% of students enrolled in associate degree programs manage to graduate within three years.”

Some of this is the result of the classically horribly low pay for community college instructors, and in a tight job market, they often prefer to work in the industries for which they would otherwise teach the relevant skills. Other aspects rest with community college boards of directors who do not have their fingers on the pulse of needed skillsets… or are perhaps consumed with anti-CRT and culture war priorities. All of these deficiencies require money, focus and prioritization to correct. Society as a whole does much better – including building a more solid tax base from graduates with higher pay – when the local job market benefits from the needed skillsets… where people are actually put to work. An effort that truly pays for itself!

I’m Peter Dekom, and this trend of charging more for tuition, providing less financial support and cost-cutting where such imprudent efforts only make the nation less competitive and the value of our human resources so much less.