Building a Bigger and Better Summit

It was really hard to watch the American Graduation Initiative get cut from SAFRA. It was one of the most promising initiatives for higher education in decades, representing a real shift from a culture of focus on college access to one focused on student success. I was crushed to see it go unfunded.

Of course, I'm feeling a little better since Jill Biden called for a White House summit on community colleges, to be held this fall. An Obama conference is a decent consolation prize. It's actually a coup, when you think about how seriously community colleges have been taken by policymakers in the past (read: not at all).

Washington needs to make the most of this opportunity. Doing this requires pushing far beyond a pleasant conversation about "best practices and successful models." Because let's be honest-there aren't very many "best practices" we can feel confident in scaling up right now. That's why building the body of research evidence on effective community college practices was a goal of AGI.

Instead Dr. Biden should move the ball forward on a serious conversation about the role of the two-year colleges in American higher education by asking the toughest questions. These should include:

• What constitutes positive, measurable outcomes for students at these schools? What does "making community colleges better" mean?

• Is making community colleges "more accessible" desirable, if it means bringing into college more students with less academic and financial preparation? Under what conditions?

• Are there efficiencies that can be gained without compromising the quality of the academic experience? For example, should state systems of community colleges be encouraged to specialize their in-person academic offerings and expand (and coordinate) their online offerings?

• What role should data play in informing decision-making of community college leaders? Data of what kind, and collected by whom?

• Which additional resources will generate the greatest returns for community college students?

Dr. Biden must emphasize that the entire sector needs to work together, across geographic boundaries (such as urban/rural and state lines), to come up with some common answers. Sure, community colleges grew out of independent communities but they now serve a much larger, national role. Collective thinking about solutions will benefit them, and help them to establish greater visibility and a more powerful voice.

This serious day will be a very important one. We can't be naïve. Even those who think the nation needs more college-educated adults and believe in accessible higher education openly discredit the work of community colleges. Know a kid who wants to earn a bachelor's degree? Some folks will counsel that kid to avoid community colleges. Their advice is based on pretty rock-hard statistical data, but its implications are troubling. Have we basically given up on a two-year route to a four-year degree? Or can we do more to change those numbers in the near future? I hope the answer from the Summit is a convincing "yes." We need the Obama Administration to lead the way.

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I'm All Hot About: Jill Biden

I'm tired of hearing Jill Biden called a 'teacher.' Really--no knocks to teachers, but Jill Biden isn't teaching children. Ms. Biden is a professor of English at Delaware Technical and Community College. That's right-- she's one of the "honored but invisible" faculty serving on the front lines of higher education.

Yes, there are "front lines" of higher ed-- as anyone watching the battles between colleges and their states knows, the community college is the dear stepchild of the system. As I describe in a paper I'm working on for the Brookings Institution, every year nearly one million new students enroll in the 1,200 public two-year colleges nationwide. In many states those schools are bursting at the seams, dramatically underfunded and insufficiently respected. This is especially true at the urban community colleges, like DTCC.

When community colleges were founded, they were nearly uniformly small and required relatively little funding. The majority of their campuses were built more than thirty years ago and have not been updated since. Further, while growth in the number of community colleges began to slow in the mid-1970s, enrollment continued to surge. The ratio of enrollment to the number of community colleges grew much more rapidly at urban colleges than at non-urban schools during the period of 1992 to 2002. Given this trend, it is not surprising that many urban community colleges are crowded both day and night, with day classes for younger students and evenings classes for working adults. Many colleges in urban areas were never built to accommodate the sizeable populations they now educate, and the effects of the overcrowding are substantial. Their classrooms lack technology, their science laboratories do not meet current educational standards, most classes are quite large, and with faculty who are often overwhelmed and demoralized.

In the midst of all of this, stands Jill Biden, wife of the future vice-president. There's no doubt that, as she hopes, she is making a difference by working at a community college. One of my most fervent hopes is that she continues her commitment to those important institutions when she moves to Washington and crafts her new agenda. It's about time for a significant revitalization of the American community college, and she's the perfect person to lead the way.

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