Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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APRIL 4-10, 2018 UCW 23 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM Community colleges merit more than lip service by JOHN HOOD JOHN HOOD, Chairman of the John Locke Foundation. COMMENTS? Editor@upandcom- ingweekly.com. 910-484-6200. North Carolina's community colleges are critically important. For More Information: Call Today 910.391.3859 Better Business Bureau of Coastal Carolina | bbb.org/myrtle-beach Add Trust To Your Brand Get Accredited 1,500 new families move into Fayetteville and Cumberland County every month. Many depend on the Better Business Bureau to recommend local "trustworthy" businesses and services. Are you an Accredited BBB Business? North Carolina politicians lavish generous praise on community colleges. Alas, this praise is more often a sort of rote incantation than a real statement of priorities. Let's change that. North Carolina's community col- leges are critically important, often a good investment of tax dollars, and deserving of far greater attention from lawmakers, education officials and opinion leaders. at attention need not be only laudatory. It should be constant – and backed by action. Hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians take at least one course each year at one of the system's 58 campuses. Some are full-time students. Most aren't. If we account for that, the equivalent of about 100,000 full-time students were enrolled in North Carolina community colleges last year. For the University of North Carolina system, the comparable figure for undergraduates was about 170,000. Most community-college students are enrolled in curriculum programs. ey are working toward an associate degree, an associate of arts, college-transfer credits or diplomas. About 15 percent are enrolled, instead, in some form of continuing education. ey are obtaining a particular job skill, retooling to change careers or taking classes simply for edification. In recent years, North Carolina policymakers have standardized course offerings among community colleges and universities, thus easing the transition for transfer students and making it more attractive for high school graduates to begin their quest for baccalaureate degrees at community colleges that cost less – for both students and taxpayers – and are closer to home. Some university leaders and policymakers resisted these changes and remain unconvinced they were a good idea. Critics view the freshman and sophomore coursework at community colleges as substandard and point to statistics such as low completion rates for asso- ciate degrees as evidence for academic weakness. ey also complain, incor- rectly, that college transfer is a dis- traction from the original, vocational mission of two-year institutions. While community colleges should always be com- mitted to continuous improvement, they often get a bum rap on quality. For one thing, measures such as degree-completion rates are notoriously uninforma- tive. Although transfer students can – and ought to – receive associate degrees from their colleges before heading to universities, large numbers of them do not even fill out the necessary paperwork. One study of full-time students who began at commu- nity colleges found that, after accounting for those who transfer without completing associate degrees, the share of students completing some kind of degree – associ- ate or baccalaureate – was 55 percent within six years. at needs to be higher, naturally, but there are UNC campuses where the average six-year graduation rates for non-transfer students are at or below this level. More to the point, the populations of students who enter higher education through community colleges are, on average, very different from those who go straight to universities. ese characteristics explain much of the difference in degree comple- tion, regardless of the type of institution attended. Do community colleges deliver value? It's a tough question to answer, but a necessary one. A 2017 analysis for Columbia University's Teacher College tracked the earnings of community college stu- dents in eight states, including ours. North Carolin- ians who completed their associate degree earned substantially more in nine years than those who attended but did not complete college. Even those who didn't graduate earned a bit more, on average, depending on how many classes they completed. e same qualities that lead to degree completion could also make one a better worker, so the education- al experience may not fully explain the wage premium. But I think the preponderance of the evidence suggests community college are, as community college profes- sor Rob Jenkins put it in a recent article for the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, "among our leanest, most efficient institutions." Unlike universi- ties, they "do not need rock-climbing walls, expensive health clubs or luxurious dormitories to attract stu- dents. All they need is adequate staffing, competent, fairly-paid faculty, and reasonably modern facilities." Lawmakers, please take note. POLITICS