Focus, and Clarity of Mission

An exchange a few days ago got me reflecting on what makes community colleges different from the rest of higher education.

It’s a young sector—half of the community colleges in the U.S. were founded in the 1960s. (My own, Westmoreland, was founded in 1970.) Most started small, and most served primarily the lower-income side of the student population. Taken together, those factors mean that most community colleges don’t have significant endowments, if they have one at all. The wonders of compound growth haven’t had time to happen, and the number of alums who’ve reached the pinnacle of their earning years is still relatively small.

That has consequences for the business model. The Truman Commission (1947–48) recommended that a national network of community colleges would be free; in most of the country, that didn’t happen, and in the places where it did (CUNY, California), “free” fell victim to budget crunches in the 1970s. Over time, in most places, tuition has covered an ever-greater share of costs, even though the colleges weren’t built for that.

Governance models tend to be complicated, though this varies by state. In some states, the boards are constituted by the various high schools in the colleges service area. (There, community colleges have superintendents and districts, much like K–12.) In others, boundaries are defined by county lines, with varying roles for state-level intervention; in still others, counties don’t matter at all. Community colleges are often seen as arms of local workforce development, adding a new set of stakeholders. And funding streams vary from “millages” to state and/or local appropriations, though again, those have lagged.

But the single biggest difference, to my mind, is focus.

Most community colleges don’t have dorms, or if they do, they serve a relatively small portion of the student body. Athletics tend to be low-profile and tend to favor lower-cost sports. (Football exists in the community college world, but it’s the exception. Basketball is much more common. I’ve never worked at a community college that had football, but they’ve all had basketball.) It’s rare to see more than a handful of students watching a game, even when there’s no charge for tickets. Student life activities exist, but they’re less expansive than you’d find at a residential four-year campus.

Universities teach, and perform research, and support high-profile sports, and provide “the college experience.” Community colleges teach. They focus on one thing.

That’s evolving, of course. Over the past few years, I’ve seen them become more active as conveners of local employers, and as workforce training providers. They can play the role of Switzerland in local turf battles, which is more useful than many people realize. Teaching, in this context, covers both credit and noncredit instruction. Our EMT training doesn’t offer academic credit, but it’s crucial for the local community.

In the new focus on workforce, I sometimes worry that the historic transfer mission gets a bit lost. Transfer remains a crucial on-ramp to higher degrees and higher-paying careers for students who might be place-bound for economic or familial reasons. It also offers a second chance for late-blooming students whose high school transcripts may be a bit uneven. This is the “college” part of “community college,” and it’s worth keeping.

In my (mumble, cough) years of community college administration across several states, I’ve never heard anyone say that we should take it easy on a student because he’s a star athlete. It has never happened. I doubt that it ever will. That’s not where our priorities are.

It can be frustrating to read press accounts of higher education that generalize entirely from high-profile, elite universities. From The New York Times, for instance, you’d think that faculty political leanings, activist students and nearly six-figure cost of attendance were the main issues facing higher education. Here, they simply aren’t. And with over a thousand community colleges across the country, I don’t think that counts as special pleading. More students attend community colleges than the entire Ivy League combined.

For all (money) of the frustrations (money) of the sector (money), one thing it absolutely has is clarity of mission. It has focus. It would be nice if the sector drew a bit more attention.