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OCR for page 59
2
Community Colleges in the 21st Century:
Challenges and Opportunities
Thomas Valleys
Community colleges account for a substantial share of American
higher education. Nearly one-half of all undergraduates in postsecondary
institutions in fall 1997 were enrolled in community colleges (NCES,
2000~), and over the span of any given year, more for-credit under-
graduate students enroll in community colleges than in baccalaureate-
granting institutions. Although data on noncredit education are unreliable,
community colleges have large and growing enrollments in noncredit
courses. In many community colleges, more students enroll in the
noncredit offerings than credit-bearing courses. Moreover, the types
of students who enroll in community colleges are precisely those
who are of most concern to scholars and policy makers. Indeed,
minorities and immigrants are overrepresented in two-year schools.
Community colleges are also much more likely than four-year schools
to enroll first-generation postsecondary students or students from low
socioeconomic backgrounds (NCES, 2000f).
But after several decades of growth, community colleges now
face a particularly challenging environment. Changes in pedagogic
and production technology; state funding policy; the expectations of
students, parents, and policy makers; demographic trends; and the
growth of new types of educational institutions and providers are
threatening established patterns of community college activities and
potentially altering the role of the colleges within the wider land-
scape of higher education. In this chapter, I first describe some of
the challenges facing community colleges and then articulate the positive
Thomas Bailey is director of the Institute on Education and the Economy and the
Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University.
This chapter is based on research funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
59
OCR for page 60
trends that may increase the demand for the services of community
colleges and possibly lead to growing enrollments. The subsequent
section describes how community colleges are responding to the challenges
they face. One of the most important responses to those challenges
has been a strategy in which the colleges seek new enrollments, revenues,
and activities. The next section discusses the controversy about this
missions-expansion strategy and identifies the reasons why this is
attractive for community colleges. The chapter ends with some assessment
of the balance of positive and negative trends with suggestions for
policy and research.
CHALLENGES
.
Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and part of the 1980s, community
colleges enjoyed strong enrollment growth. But in contrast to the
previous decades, community college enrollments declined slightly
during the 1990s. Total fall enrollments peaked in 1992 at 5.7 million
students, but stood at about 5.4 million in 1998 (NCES, 2000d). For
the first time, colleges in many states faced declining enrollments,
although in some states they turned back up by the end of the decade.
Moreover, during the 1990s, state funding priorities shifted away
from higher education as prisons and health care accounted for larger
shares of state budgets. Thus the share of state budgets going to
higher education shrank from 12.2 percent in 1990 to 10.1 percent in
2000 (National Association of States Budget Officers [NASBO], 2000~.
California is a good example. Like many state systems, the California
public higher education system went through a severe budget crisis
early in the decade.
, ~ ~
While the economic recovery brought some
improvements to state universities and colleges, that improvement did
not keep pace with overall economic growth. And as the economy
faltered in the first years of the new century, higher education bud-
gets again came under pressure. As a New York Times article from
September 11, 2001, stated, "State Colleges, Feeling Pinch, Cut Costs
and Raise Tuitions."
Moreover, within the public state systems, community colleges
must provide an education with fewer resources than their four-year
counterparts. For example, in the 1995-1996 school year, instruc-
tional expenditures for public community colleges stood at $3,420
per full-time equivalent student, compared to $5,486 for public colleges
and $6,946 for public universities (NCES, 2000e).
Changing expectations about educational attainment will also influence
community college enrollments. Increasingly, students state that they
expect to earn a bachelor's degree. In 1980, 57 percent of all high
school seniors stated that they either probably or definitely would
graduate from a four-year college program. By 1997 that share had
risen to over 77 percent (NCES, 2000f). Baccalaureate aspirations
had risen even among students enrolled in community colleges. In
the early 1980s, about 45 percent of such students stated that their
60
COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
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objective was to earn a bachelor's degree, while in the early 1990s,
70 percent had that goal (Schneider and Stevenson, 1999~. As students
focus more on earning four-year degrees, we would expect to see
~~ ~ ^ ~ ^ ~~ . Indeed total enroll-
~ ~ ,
meets in these institutions did rise between 1995 and 1998 while
community college enrollments were stable. And the NCES projects
that four-year enrollments will grow faster over the next decade than
enrollments shirt towards four-year colleges
two-year enrollments (NCES, 2000e).
To be sure, community colleges transfer programs are designed
to provide access to four-year programs, but policy makers and researchers
continue to criticize low transfer rates. Of those first-time college
students who started at a community college in 1989, about 22 percent
had transferred to a four-year school five years later (NCES, 2000a)
and less than one-tenth of students who begin in two-year colleges
ever complete a bachelor's degree (Schneider and Stevenson, 1999~.
On the other hand, many students start two-year programs without a
clear intention of transferring; therefore, it is difficult to evaluate any
given transfer level. Nevertheless, as the number of students who do
want a four-year degree grows, there will be more pressure to increase
transfer rates.
While policy makers pressure colleges to increase their transfer
rates, they are also introducing measures that will increase the number
of poorly prepared students who are attending these colleges. Develop-
mental courses already absorb resources, and many students in regular
college courses continue to need extra help. There are certainly some
success stories (Hebel, 1999; Roucche and Roucche, 2001~. Devel-
opmental education is a central component of the colleges' mission to
provide access; however, large numbers of poorly prepared students
complicate college efforts to improve transfer and graduation rates.
Over the last two decades, the colleges' social and economic envi-
ronment has changed. Other institutions including public and non-
profit four-year colleges, community-based organizations, for-profit
companies, in-house company trainers, and even other community
colleges compete with community colleges in every function that
they carry out. Many public four-year colleges have expanded their
continuing education offerings, sometimes even offering full degrees,
in an attempt to reach the type of adult and part-time student who
have traditionally been served by community colleges. For-profit
companies are offering short-term training, preparation for technical
certifications, and full degrees at several levels. In the last few years,
for-profit educational institutions such as the University of Phoenix
and the DeVry Institutes have attracted significant attention as potential
competitors. These institutions appear to have been able to attract
adult students with strong occupational objectives. In the past, community
colleges have prided themselves on being able to service precisely
these types of students.
The potential effect of computer-based distance education is perhaps
the greatest unknown concerning the nature of the competitive land-
THOMAS BAILEY
61
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scape. Certainly to the extent that distance education reduces the
need for students to be at a particular place at a particular time and
does so at a reasonable cost, the educational market will be a free-for-
all. In general. research suggests that distance education is as effec-
O O
. . . .. . . . ~ . .
tine at teaching substance as traditional classroom formats, although
the students have to be motivated and organized. Community college
professors argue that many of their students need the structure provided
by the personal contact in the classroom. But whatever the problems
and potentials, distance education is growing rapidly. According to
data collected by the NCES, between 1995 and 1997, the share of
community colleges offering distance education course grew from 58 to
72 percent. The equivalent shares for public four-year institutions
were 62 and 79 percent. Most of the rest of these colleges (two- and
four-year) said that they planned to offer courses through a distance
education format within three years. (By 1997, private colleges were
far behind.) And during those two years, distance education enroll-
ments more than doubled to 1.6 million, although the number of students
involved was smaller since these figures represent duplicated headcounts
(NCES, 1999a).
Although the continued growth of computer-based distance educa-
tion seems certain, many questions remain about the impact of those
developments on different types of institutions. At this point, most of
the students who participate in computer-based distance education also
take regular courses at the same institution. So far, students whose
only contact with an institution is through an online course are more
rare. But what can be said is that the growth and potential of distance
education have created tremendous uncertainty in higher education.
And community colleges may be at a disadvantage in the online edu-
cational race, since they have much more restricted budgets than four-
year public schools and lack the for-profits' access to capital markets.
POSITIVE TRENDS
While the colleges certainly face difficult challenges, several cur-
rent developments are likely to increase the demand for a community
college education over the next several years. First, the number of
students in the typical college-going age is projected to increase sharply
over the next decade. The children of baby boomers (the baby boom
echo) are moving through their college years and are expected to
expand college enrollments. The NCES projects that two-year college
enrollments, which stood at roughly 5.7 million for fall 1999, will
grow by 11 to 16 percent over the next decade (Gerald and Hussar,
2000~.
In addition, the growing foreign-born population in the United
States will also create an increasing demand for community college
education. Immigration has already had an impact on college enroll-
ments in California. The City University of New York (CUNY), New
York City's public higher education system, was already almost 50
62
COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
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percent foreign born in the fall of 1997 while the population of the
city as a whole was about 41 percent foreign born. And within the
CUNY system, recent immigrants were overrepresented in the two-
year programs (Bailey and Weininger, 2001).
The patterns of postsecondary enrollments have changed over the
last two decades, and these trends may also benefit community colleges.
Much of the policy and research about college enrollment has often
been dominated by a traditional conceptualization in which students
attend college full-time immediately after high school and continue
their enrollment uninterrupted until they graduate. But this view is
increasingly misleading. If we define a traditional student as one
who attends college full-time and full-year until they graduate, then
only 17 percent of those who started college for the first time in 1989
were traditional students enrolled in four-year institutions. Another
17 percent were traditional students who started in two-year institutions.
The remaining 66 percent of all first-time college students could be
considered nontraditional students because either they attended part-
time, interrupted their studies, or changed institutions. Furthermore,
this share of nontraditional students would rise further if we counted
students who delayed their first-time entry into college. And data
from the High School and Beyond survey, which includes students
who should have graduated from high school in the early 1980s,
suggest that the number of nontraditional students grew significantly
during the 1980s. For example, the percentage of undergraduates
who attended more than one institution increased from 40 percent to
54 percent during the 1970s and 1980s, and data from the l990s
suggest that this share will have increased to over 60 percent during
the first years of the new decade (Adelman, 1999; NCES, 2000b).
The growth of the importance of these diverse pathways through
postsecondary education may favor community colleges, which are
more oriented towards nontraditional students than four-year schools.
For example, community college students are much more likely to
enroll part-time and tend to be older than four-year college students
(and therefore delayed or interrupted their enrollment). In 1998,
57 percent of part-time undergraduates were enrolled in community
colleges. And 60 percent of four-year college students were 18-24
years old, while 48 percent of all two-year college students were in
that prime college-going age (NCES, 2000c).
Developments in technology and its effects on skill requirements
will also continue to create a demand for community college education.
Projections of the growth of employment in different occupations and
trends in the earnings of workers with various levels of education
1These numbers are based on calculations by the author using data from the Beginning
Postsecondary Students (BPS:89/94) survey. This data set, collected by the National
Center for Education Statistics, includes a sample of students who entered post-
secondary educational institutions for the first time in 1989. It collects data on those
students through the 1993-1994 school year.
THOMAS BAILEY
63
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show that at least some education beyond high school will be necessary
to have access to jobs with earnings that might allow an individual to
support
with an
a family. While college graduates do earn more than those
associate degree, the value of one year of community college
education is more or less equivalent to the value of a year of educa-
tion at a four-year college. The same can be said for the economic
value of credits earned at the two types of institutions (Grubb, 1999a;
Kane and Rouse, 1995~. Between 1973 and 1998, the share of prime-
age workers with some education beyond high school but no bachelor's
degree more than doubled from 12 to 27 percent, while the share of
the workforce that had a bachelor's degree increased from 16 to 30
percent (Carnevale and Desrochers, 2001~. While the role of associate
degrees relative to bachelor's degrees remains in flux, these trends
indicate that a growing number of jobs in the economy can be effectively
held by workers with postsecondary education short of a bachelor's
degree.
Weak high school preparation will also continue to create a role
for community colleges, essentially giving students a second chance
to prepare for college-level work. NCES judged that even among
families with incomes above $75,000 a year, less than 60 percent of
high school graduates were either highly or very highly qualified for
admission to a four-year college. Another 30 percent were either
somewhat or minimally qualified. But the levels of preparation for
high school graduates from families earning less than $25,000 a year
were much worse. Forty-seven percent were not even minimally qualified
and only 21 percent were either highly or very highly qualified for
admissions to a four-year college (NCES, 2000f). And 40 percent of
students at four-year colleges and 63 percent of community college
students take at least one remedial course (NCES, 2000b). Moreover,
several states, including New York and Georgia, and universities, such
as California State University, are now trying to limit access to four-
year institutions of students who need remedial help. In the case of
CUNY, remedial education is concentrated at community colleges and
is being phased out of the 11 four-year colleges. Thus all of these
trends indicate that the role of community colleges providing develop-
mental education will continue and probably increase.
In the increasingly competitive postsecondary market, low tuition
continues to be one of the community colleges' most important assets.
This provides an important buffer against competition in states like
California where full-year tuition at a community college in 1997 was
less than $500. In contrast, community college tuition in New York
State was over $2500 in that year (American Association of Community
Colleges LAACC], 2001~.
Trends over the last 20 years suggest that the community college
tuition advantage over public four-year colleges has grown. In the
1971-1972 school year, four-year college tuition exceeded two-year
tuition by $530 (2001 dollars). That gap grew steadily over the subsequent
64
COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
OCR for page 65
three decades to $2016 for the 2001-2002 school year (College Board,
2001)
THE COMMUNITY COLLEGE RESPONSE
Community colleges therefore continue to enjoy many advantages.
These include low tuition, local political support, and favorable
demographic and educational trends, at least for the next few years,
which will increase the potential supply of students at community
colleges. The growing emphasis on noncredit education and on delayed,
interrupted, multiple-institutional, and part-time college enrollment
favors the more nontraditional history and emphasis of community
colleges, at least when compared to public and nonprofit four-year
institutions. But increasingly competitive markets, evolving student
expectations, and significant changes in funding systems and pedagogic
technologies have created a much more volatile and uncertain environment.
How have community colleges responded to these developments?
Community college administrators and faculty realize that their
students and the public that funds them continue to expect the colleges
to provide opportunities to transfer to four-year colleges. Many states
are implementing a variety of policies designed to facilitate transfer
from both academic majors (the traditional transfer-oriented majors)
and occupational majors that have traditionally been viewed as terminal
community college programs (AACC, 2001~. These policies include
common course content and numbering systems that guarantee that
credit earned at a community college will be accepted in that state's
four-year schools.
Indeed, over the last two decades, many researchers and college
administrators and faculty have argued that the fundamental role of
the community college is to provide more or less open access to
lower division collegiate education. From this point of view, providing
transferable liberal arts education is the core function of the colleges.
It is through this function that community colleges realize their mission
as the nation's primary site of equal access to higher education (Eaton,
1994; Cohen and Brawer, 1996; Brint and Karabel, 1989~.
As Eaton (1994) observed:
The collegiate community college is an extraordinary way for a
democratic society to provide the best of higher education to as
many people as can reasonably benefit. It is a profound statement of
the unique value this country assigns to the individual and of its
faith in the future. As a collegiate institution, the community college
is unparalleled in providing, sustaining, and expanding educational
opportunity and accomplishment within the society. (p. 5)
Although state agencies and college faculty and staff have worked
hard to promote transfer, this has not been the primary or most prominent
community college response to the financial and political challenges
that they have faced over the last decade. Much of the energy and
enthusiasm at the college level is focused on other activities. All
THOMAS BAILEY
65
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presidents will articulate their commitment to transfer education, but
raising the transfer rate is rarely a college's first priority.
During the last half of the 1990s, many community college staff
turned their attention to pedagogic issues. This reform movement
seeks to establish and strengthen the "Learning College." Improving
the quality of teaching may be one approach to engaging young people
and addressing the criticisms that the colleges do a poor job of retain-
ing their students. While this has generated a great deal of useful
discussion about teaching, according to Grubb (1999b), so far colleges
have not introduced, on a widespread basis, the types of institutional
changes necessary to bring about a significant change in teaching.
Thus, many colleges, as a strategy to improve their position and
do a better job of serving their constituencies, have tried to reform
their current operations. But as a widespread response to budgetary
pressure, many community colleges have sought new markets, new
students, and new sources of revenues. One indication of this is the
dramatic shift in the sources of community college funds. In the past,
community colleges have depended primarily on state appropriations.
In 1980, 53 percent of all college revenues were accounted for by this
source. But by 1996, the state share of revenues had dropped to
34 percent (Merisotis and Wolanin, 2000~. The share of local revenues
also fell slightly from 17.3 to 15.6 percent. In contrast, the revenue
share accounted for by state and federal grants and contracts grew
dramatically from 1 percent in 1980 to 18 percent by 1996.
In any case, almost every community college is aggressively developing
its noncredit and continuing education programs. The continuing education
catalog of a community college will show a wide array of courses,
although various types of computer-related training, including prepa-
ration for IT certification exams, are increasingly common. At least
in terms of the number of students (not FTEs), noncredit enrollments
often surpass credit enrollments. These courses outside of the tradi-
tional degree streams have many advantages for the colleges. They
can be developed with fewer constraints associated with accreditation,
state regulation, and faculty prerogatives. In many cases, they can
generate surpluses (although in most cases, the accounting does not
take account of the costs of space and college administrative over-
head). Some noncredit enrollments are generated through customized
training contracts with companies. In these cases, specific firms con-
tract with a college (often the resources come from state economic
development funds rather than directly from the company) to provide
specific training, frequently at the company site (Dougherty and Bakia,
1999~. While such contracts represent a minority of noncredit enroll-
ments, they often have a high profile and carry political significance
disproportionate to their size, since they solidify partnerships with
influential local businesses.
While community colleges have broadened their missions by seeking
out new types of postsecondary students, they have also sought to
expand their roles vertically providing education to high school students
66
COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
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and in some cases postassociate degree students.2 The growth of
dual enrollment programs for high school students has been one of
the most talked-about trends in community colleges over the last year
or two. Many colleges have enrolled hundreds of high school students,
and, in some cases, those enrollments have increased dramatically in
just a few years. College administrators, especially financial officers,
are very enthusiastic about these efforts. Most of the offerings are in
the social sciences and humanities and therefore do not need expen-
sive equipment. Often, the courses are taught at the high schools and
do not require additional space. And the instructors are usually adjuncts
or high school teachers who are certified (essentially through their
educational credentials) to teach college-level courses. The colleges
therefore incur extremely low costs and are often reimbursed at the
regular FTE rate. The students can usually earn both high school and
college credit.
So far, little is known about what happens to these
students, but it is likely that many of them go on to four-year rather
than two-year colleges. They therefore represent a new market for
the community colleges. Alternatively, the involvement in the high
school may increase the likelihood that the high school students will
choose that particular community college. Therefore the dual enroll-
ment programs have both financial and marketing benefits for the
colleges.3
In another trend towards vertical expansion, community colleges
in some states are also exploring the possibility of offering applied
bachelor's degrees. Although this strategy has its proponents, it remains
controversial and perhaps the preponderance of community college
officials are skeptical. Some presidents argue that if community colleges
start offering four-year degrees, their commitment to open access
may be weakened. The differences in the conditions of employment
of faculty at two- and four-year colleges may also pose a problem to
this vertical expansion of the community college mission. Will com-
munity college faculty working in four-year programs still be willing
to teach the typically much higher community college load? Although
the applied baccalaureate is definitely controversial, the movement
does seem to be gaining some momentum.
As they search for new functions and markets, the colleges try to
find opportunities to exploit the skills and staff they already have.
For example, a strong computer science department would give a
college an advantage in offering noncredit programs to prepare stu-
dents for information technology certifications. Nevertheless, in many
cases, there is very little coordination among programs that are sub-
stantively related. This is particularly true with regard to the coordi-
2See Smith-Morest (2001) for a full discussion of horizontal and vertical mission
expansion.
30ther institutions are beginning to take notice of this market. Administrators at
one college said that the community college, the local four-year public university,
and two private nonprofit colleges were all offering courses in one local high school.
THOMAS BAILEY
67
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nation between credit and related noncredit programs. Often the ex-
tension or adult education functions are housed in separate buildings,
use different faculty, and are managed by different administrators.
Credit and noncredit programs in similar areas may actually be in
competition for students or perhaps for relationships and partnerships
with local businesses that could hire graduates and provide equipment.
In many cases, the developmental education function is poorly
coordinated with the core substantive programs. Some educators have
argued that there are important pedagogic benefits to the coordination
of academic and vocational education, and this does appear to be a
strategy to reduce the potential conflict between transfer-oriented aca-
demic programs and more applied occupational terminal degrees (Grubb,
l999b). Nevertheless, while many community college faculty members
and administrators favor the integration of academic and vocational
instruction, it is difficult to find well-developed programs that actually
put the approach into practice (Perin, 1998~.
Thus, community colleges have responded to the challenges that
they face by building out and by seeking new markets and functions,
more than by focusing on more intensive efforts to improve what they
are already doing. The result is that most community colleges are
now institutions with multiple missions directed at addressing the needs
and interests of a wide variety of constituencies. The list of missions
includes transfer to a bachelor's program, terminal occupational edu-
cation, developmental education, adult basic education, English as a
second language, education and training for welfare recipients and
others facing serious barriers to employment, customized training to
· r. · , · r , ~ , r · ~ , , · r. , ~
specific companies, preparation of students for 1nclustry certl~lcatlon
exams, noncredit instruction in a plethora of areas (including purely
avocational courses), small business development, and even economic
forecasting.
THE DEBATE ABOUT MULTIPLE MISSIONS
This comprehensive strategy is not without its critics. Advocates
of the primacy of the transfer function have been among the most
vocal opponents of this broader strategy.
. . . .. . . ..
These critics argue that the
growing emphasis on occupational eciucatlon, as opposed to academic-
oriented transfer programs, has a negative effect on transfer rates.
According to this view, an accent on vocationalism draws students
into programs that largely do not encourage transfer. At the same
time, vocationalism demoralizes the academic programs that encourage
transfer (Dougherty, 1994~. Brint and Karabel (1989) think that this
function has changed the entire mission of community colleges and
turned them into vocational schools for low- and middle-class occupations.
thus limiting students' opportunities for advancement. An institution
established to "level up" disadvantaged segments of society has leveled
down the critical literacy skills required for the degree programs. Clark
(1961), in his classic work on community colleges, suggested that the
68
COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
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colleges played a functional role in adjusting (down) the expectations
of students so that they would be consistent with the realities of the
labor market. As the mission of community colleges evolved to meet
a broader range of needs, the earlier emphasis on liberal education
and on the transfer function appeared to take a back seat to the newer
demands: vocational mission "eclipsed" the emphasis on transfer and
liberal education (Wechsler, 1968; Katsinas, 1994~.
While these critics oppose mission expansion because it weakens
the academic transfer function, others object to the comprehensive
model because it detracts from what they believe should be the core
function of the community college vocational education (Blocker,
Plummer, and Richardson, 1965; Grubb, 1996~. A growing number
of policy makers and business leaders look to occupational education
at the community college as a key site for building the work force for
the next century (Hebel, 1999~. Indeed, Leitzel and Clowes ~ 1991 ~
consider vocationalism to be the most important distinctive niche of
community colleges within the system of higher education. Clowes
and Levine (1989) argue that career education is the only viable core
function for most community colleges. According to Grubb (1996),
the colleges and their role in society are not served well by the con-
tinued criticism of the vocational function and a strong emphasis on
transfer and academics: "One implication for community colleges is
that they need to take their broadly defined occupational purposes
more seriously.... They are not academic institutions ... even when
many of their students hope to transfer to four-year colleges" (p. 83~.
He argues that (1) the emphasis on academic education implies that
there is only one valued postsecondary institution, defined by the
research university; (2) community colleges cannot win the academic
battle because they are not selective; and (3) community colleges
mostly fail in large transfer numbers, therefore their clientele is left
with outcomes of uncertain academic value.
Another argument against a comprehensive strategy is more general-
community colleges simply cannot do everything well and therefore
must choose a more limited set of objectives on which to focus. As
Cross (1985) asked, "Can any college perform all of those functions
with excellence or even adequately in today' s climate of scarce resources
and heavy competition for students?" After predicting growing fiscal
pressures on the colleges, Breneman and Nelson (1980) made a similar
argument, stating that the "most fundamental choice facing community
colleges is whether to emphasize the community-based learning center
concept, with an emphasis on adult and continuing education and
community services, or to emphasize transfer programs, sacrificing
elsewhere if necessary.... It may no longer be possible to have it
both ways" (p. 114~. This perspective probably owes something to
the argument that businesses must focus on their core competencies,
and indeed, the successful for-profit institutions of higher education
have tended to pursue a much more focused strategy. For example,
the University of Phoenix concentrates on educating adult working
THOMAS BAILEY
69
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students and does not try to serve the 18-year-old "traditional" college
population. The DeVry Institutes specialize in a small number of
technical degrees and simply do not expect to enroll students inter-
ested in majoring in the humanities, the social sciences, or many of
the sciences.
Despite these calls for more focus, community colleges and indeed
whole state systems have continued to move towards comprehensive
models. Even states such as Wisconsin, which has maintained a tech-
nical college system with a primary mission of providing occupational
education, have developed programs to facilitate the eventual transfer
of their students to four-year programs. Few new colleges are being
built, but one recent example clearly shows the appeal of the compre-
hensive model. The college planners used several approaches to survey
the needs of the community and found an interest in a wide variety of
transfer and occupational courses. The college then planned to try to
respond to almost all of these interests.
Why have community colleges rejected a more focused approach
in favor of a comprehensive strategy? Why has their response to
financial pressures been to seek new markets and sources of revenue
rather than to concentrate primarily on their core functions?
First, political factors, on the one hand, make presidents very reluctant
to shed programs and, on the other, create incentives to take on new
ones. New programs have the potential to create new constituencies
that in turn generate state- and local-level political support at the
needed level to maintain the flow of tax revenues. Thus, even if a new
program outside of the college's traditional activities loses money in
an immediate sense, it may create a political environment that leads to
additional reimbursements from the state, county, or local government
for its core activities.4
Second, sometimes new programs are believed to generate sur-
pluses. If the institution has any excess capacity (which many did
have in the l990s after a period of stable or falling enrollments), then
the programs can be mounted at a low marginal cost. Even small
surpluses from programs can provide presidents with discretionary
funds when most of the revenues from the core credit programs are
tied up in faculty salaries and other fixed costs. As state funding
becomes more uncertain, these alternative sources of revenue appear
more attractive. This development can be seen in the dramatic growth
of the share of college budgets accounted for by state and federal
grants.
Moreover, it is not surprising that in search of new revenues,
institutions will seek new markets rather than try to increase their
market share in their old activities. For example, attracting more
transfer students with bachelor's degree aspirations would require the
4For example, one of the reasons that a community college I visited in 2001 had
introduced a dual enrollment program with local high schools was to build political
support among taxpayers for additional local revenues.
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COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
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college to convince students who previously did not enroll despite
the presence of the transfer program. This might seem particularly
difficult, especially as four-year colleges are trying to attract the same
students. Exploiting unserved markets seems to be easier than increasing
market share in mature markets.
Third, college administrators are not convinced that additional
missions will weaken current activities. Even if they were convinced.
they would not know which activities on their own could provide a
strong financial and political foundation. One of the fundamental
tenets of the view that the community colleges are failed transfer
institutions is that all of the new activities, particularly the growing
importance of occupational education, have weakened the traditional
transfer functions. Most community college administrators reject this
notion. Moreover, most colleges do not keep data or records in such
a way that they could evaluate the extent of cross-subsidies or the
negative (or positive) effects that one program or function has on
others. While it is easy to count new revenues as students enroll in
new programs, it is much more difficult to measure the costs, especially
the strain on infrastructure and the attention of administrators, of
those new programs. Furthermore, despite the logic of the argument
that one institution cannot do many things well, there is no definitive
empirical evidence for this negative effect.
Fourth, some community college experts have argued that a wide
variety of program offerings under one roof is exactly what community
college students need. According to this view, these students often
have ambiguous or unrealistic education goals. If properly guided,
these students can take advantage of the varied offerings as their
interests change and as they converge on goals that better match their
interests and skills. In these conceptualizations, it is argued that
community colleges should further develop their comprehensive missions
so that students have whatever support they need in order to move
into gainful employment, regardless of whether that support involves
general education, skills training, or student support services (Baker,
1999; Gleazer, 1980; Vaughan, 1985~.
Thus, it is not surprising that colleges have continued to move
towards a more comprehensive strategy. Shedding programs risks
losing visible enrollments and political support in favor of an abstract
goal of focused organizational efficiency, which, though logical, lacks
definitive empirical measurement and evidence.
OUTLOOK AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Community colleges have many strengths: demographic and tech-
nological development, the growing importance of nontraditional pathways
through college, commitment to access and open admissions, and a
continued supply of students whose weak high school preparation
creates a need for community college remedial services. The for-
profit competitors that have attracted so much attention have only
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succeeded in garnering a market share in the two-year sector in the
low single digits. Moreover, according to the latest available data, at
least through the middle years of the l990s, that market share did not
grow (Bailey, Badway, and Gumport, in press). Although the for-
profits may offer formidable competition to community colleges for
some types of students, it is unlikely that they will threaten a signifi-
cant part of the community college market in the foreseeable future.5
Moreover, public and private/nonprofit four-year institutions may represent
a more significant threat to community colleges than for-profit institutions.
But as long as the gap between community college tuition and the
tuition charged by other postsecondary institutions remains as large as
it is, community colleges will have a strong buffer against competition.
And that gap continues to grow.
Nevertheless, while the colleges will continue to attract enroll-
ments, complacency is hardly in order. State and local legislators will
continue to put financial pressure on the colleges both through general
fiscal restraints and possibly demands for greater accountability for
outcomes. But the community college response to these pressures has
been to seek new markets and revenues rather than to concentrate
primarily on a smaller number of core functions. As we have seen,
the strongest incentives push the colleges toward a more comprehen-
sive strategy. The danger with this strategy is that while it may
generate enthusiasm and revenues about new activities, it may do so
without necessarily improving the quality of the core degree-granting
transfer and occupational programs.
Given that community colleges will continue to pursue a compre-
hensive strategy, what can administrators and state policy makers do
to guarantee that colleges will be effective within the framework of
comprehensiveness? The first and perhaps most obvious approach is
to pay particular attention to the core functions of teaching and student
services, especially student advising. Excitement about new alliances
with local businesses or burgeoning noncredit classes to prepare students
for industry certification exams should not detract from efforts to
introduce the institutional features needed to improve teaching in the
colleges or to increase and upgrade student advising services.
Second, colleges need to search for and exploit the complementarities
between their different functions. Too often, the potential for coop-
eration and coordination is rarely realized. Such cooperation has long-
run financial and substantive benefits, yet it also requires a significant
commitment on the part of the institutional leadership and some investment
of resources in the short run.
Finally, colleges need to be able to analyze the effectiveness of
their different programs and need to have better measures of the benefits
and especially the costs of those programs. As it is now, administrators
50n the other hand, community colleges may have a good deal to learn from the
higher quality for-profit institutions, especially in the area of student services. For a
more detailed discussion of this, see Bailey, sadway, and Gumport <2001~.
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COMMUNITY COLLEGES IN THE 21ST CENTURY
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in most colleges are not able to determine which programs generate
surpluses and which require cross-subsidization. This vagueness about
costs tends to encourage an increase in the number of programs and
activities since the revenues generated by the new enrollments are
easier to count than the direct and, especially, the indirect costs associated
with those programs. This is not to say that colleges would never
want to continue, or even to expand, programs that require cross-
subsidization. Nevertheless, whatever the objectives, better information
will help them achieve those objectives. In the end, there may be
many sound economic and social reasons for the multifunction college,
but those reasons have yet to be measured systematically.
Community colleges make up a large and fundamentally impor-
tant sector in higher education. While they face some significant
challenges, they continue to have significant potential for the next
several years. Strong incentives have encouraged them to take on an
increasing number of missions and functions. As a result, they have
evolved into extremely complex institutions, carrying out a large variety
of activities that serve a diverse set of constituencies. Colleges need
to continue to focus on improving the services that they already provide
and to do a better job of finding and exploiting complementarities
among missions so that they can realize the potential benefits that
coordinated activities can bring.
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Representative terms from entire chapter:
community college
