Brookings: Topics - Community Colleges

Is There a Better Way to Prepare Disadvantaged Students for College?

Tue, 07 May 2013 09:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 7, 2013
9:00 AM - 11:00 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, DC 20036

A major barrier to college education for students from low-income families is that they are poorly prepared to do college work. Since the War on Poverty of the 1960s, the federal government has funded several programs to help prepare disadvantaged students to succeed in college. Evaluations show that these programs are at best only modestly successful.

On May 7, Princeton University and the Brookings Institution released the latest issue of The Future of Children—a journal that promotes effective, evidence-based policies and programs for children—which examines the state of postsecondary education in the United States. Journal co-editor Cecilia Rouse provided an overview of the issue’s contents. Ron Haskins of Brookings presented findings from an accompanying policy brief that proposes a plan to improve college preparation programs for students from disadvantaged families by consolidating them into a single grant program and requiring that funded programs be backed by rigorous evidence. Following their presentations, Harry Holzer of Georgetown University responded to the proposal from the policy brief. A panel of experts then discussed the proposed reform and offered their own thoughts on the value of postsecondary education for low-income students.

Video

Using Data to Improve the Performance of Workforce Training

Louis Jacobson and Robert J. LaLonde — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 08:00:00 -0400

Abstract

Training programs provide opportunities for low-income individuals to qualify for better jobs and enter the middle class. These programs also provide opportunities for workers who lost long-held jobs to qualify for new positions that can offset a substantial fraction of their earnings losses. Although millions of workers seek out career and technical training options in the pursuit of financial security and better lives, many ultimately choose programs that do not suit their needs. Some individuals do not complete their training programs, some find that their new skills do not match the needs of local employers, while many others, uncertain of the outcomes, hesitate to invest time and money into training programs altogether. Too many workers are making poor choices in training, but fortunately, this problem can be resolved by helping workers select programs that they are more likely to complete and that are more likely to raise their earnings potential. This paper proposes a state-by-state solution, relying on a competitive framework to encourage states to help prospective trainees make better-informed choices. The plan will increase the return on training investments by developing the data and measures necessary to provide the information prospective trainees need, by presenting the information in user-friendly “report cards,” by providing help for prospective trainees to use the information effectively, and by creating incentives for states to implement permanent information systems once they prove cost-effective. Using a mix of online systems coupled with assistance from career counselors, the ultimate goal of this proposal is to provide unambiguous evidence about how information systems can improve training outcomes for prospective trainees. With the earnings divide between skilled and unskilled workers at a historic high, it is imperative that we raise overall workforce skills in order to enhance America’s competitiveness and ensure economic growth for all Americans.

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Using Data to Improve the Performance of Workforce Training -- Full Paper

Authors

Louis Jacobson
Robert J. LaLonde

Publication: The Hamilton Project

Image Source: Catherine Yeulet

Transitioning DC’s Community College to Independence

Mon, 23 Apr 2012 12:29:00 -0400

Editor's Note: In testimony before the D.C. Council Committee on Housing and Workforce Development, the members of the District of Columbia Community College Transition to Independence Advisory Board discussed steps that the university must take to move the new community college toward independent accreditation.

I. Introduction

Good Morning Chairman Brown. Thank you for providing us an opportunity to testify on issues related to the budget for the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) with a specific focus on how they might affect the newly formed community college. We are the five member District of Columbia Community College Transition to Independence Advisory Board (Advisory Board), appointed by Mayor Gray and Council Chairman Kwame Brown in accordance with the Community College of the District of Columbia Plan for Independence Act of 2011 (Independence Act): Walter Smith, Carrie Thornhill, Alice Rivlin, Joshua Kern and John Hill. That law charges us to develop jointly with the UDC Board of Trustees, the UDC President, and the Community College CEO a plan for the community college to operate independently from the flagship university.

In order to develop this plan, we have engaged subject matter experts in higher education accreditation, higher education financing, and labor law. We also have met with partners and stakeholders including members of UDC’s Board, President Sessoms and his staff, and Community College CEO Jonathan Gueverra and his staff. We are pleased that our partners will also testify today.

We are currently working to finalize the plan, which will recommend a process for moving the community college to academic, operational, and financial independence in accordance with guidelines of the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (Middle States), our region’s higher education accrediting body.[1] The plan recommends a process by which the community college would first become a branch campus of UDC in Fiscal Year (FY) 2013 and then move toward separate accreditation. Once the community college achieves separate accreditation, it can become an independent institution or remain part of a university system. Taking the final step to full independence would be up to the Mayor and Council and the Board of UDC, not Middle States.

While this entire process is likely to take three to four years, there are critical steps that UDC and the D.C. Council must take in FY2013 to start moving the community college to independence while also strengthening the flagship university. While we expect our proposal about that process to be explored in some detail in the plan we are helping to develop, our testimony today is focused on four issues particular to the FY2013 budget.

First, we describe the resources we think are necessary in FY2013 for the community college to achieve branch campus status and build the necessary capacity to start moving toward separate accreditation.
Second, we explain why UDC’s financial status must be sound in order for the community college to achieve branch campus status and eventually independence, and why we think UDC’s current financial condition is precarious and unsustainable.
Third, we suggest that UDC’s Board of Trustees, in partnership with elected officials, develop a shared vision of public higher education that is part of a continuum of life-long learning. The priorities identified in this vision should drive the community college’s move to independence as well as the university’s efforts to become sustainable.
And fourth, we describe the major institutional right-sizing effort we think UDC should undertake in FY2013 in order to improve its financial sustainability.

II. The FY2013 Budget should provide the community college with the resources necessary first to achieve branch campus status and then build capacity to start moving toward separate accreditation.

In creating the community college in 2009, UDC recognized that DC needed a community college and that the mission, staffing, and operations of a community college were different from those of a four-year institution. Since then, UDC has implemented several changes to differentiate the community college from the flagship university—the community college has an open admissions policy; a lower tuition rate; its own administration, faculty, and academic staff; and separate facilities.

Yet the community college remains an academic division of UDC. It is included in UDC’s accreditation status, does not have a legal identity outside of the university, and cannot confer its own degrees. It operates under UDC’s labor agreements, but the terms of those agreements do not address the community college’s unique operational, staffing, and financial needs. Though the community college now occupies a separate physical location, UDC provides services to the community college in several key areas, such as academic affairs, financial operations, and student affairs among others. In addition, the community college’s CEO serves at the pleasure of the UDC President, and does not report directly to the Board of Trustees.

The best path to move the community college from its current circumstances to independence is through the Middle States’ accreditation process. This process would allow the community college to achieve separate accreditation without risking its ability either to confer accredited degrees or provide financial aid to students during the transition to independence. The first stage in this process is for the community college to become a branch campus of UDC. Once branch campus status is achieved, UDC and the community college would work toward achieving the requirements for the branch to be separately accredited. It is important to note that, as the accredited institution, UDC must lead this process.

Achieving Branch Campus Status in FY2013

In order to qualify as a branch campus in accordance with Middle States policy, the community college must be geographically separate from the main campus and must have the following three characteristics [2]:

Courses in educational programs leading to a degree, certificate, or other recognized educational credential
Its own faculty and administrative or supervisory organization
Its own budgetary and hiring authority

As it currently stands, the community college is close to satisfying these requirements. It has its own locations separate from UDC’s Van Ness campus, in the former Bertie Backus Middle School, 801 North Capitol, and the Patricia Roberts Harris Building. It offers courses that lead to certificates and associate degrees, as well as an extensive workforce development program. In addition, the community college has its own faculty and administrative organization, and the CEO of CCDC has some hiring authority. To fully satisfy the branch campus requirements, however, the community college will need more organizational capacity and budget autonomy and authority. This can be achieved through the FY2013 budget.

In order to fully achieve branch campus status in FY2013 the Budget Support Act will have to include both line-item budget authority for the community college and sufficient funding to clearly indicate the capacity for separate fiscal operations. Our independent financial experts, Attain, have concluded that the total direct costs of operating the community college and building necessary capacity for branch campus status is $21.48 million: $18.7 million of this amount would cover the community college’s existing direct operating costs; and the remaining $2.7 million would provide additional support for recruiting four department heads, adequate levels of adjunct faculty, and some direct service staff to meet student needs at the community college’s locations. (Please see attached budget for more detail). However, projections anticipate that these total direct costs will be offset by $7 million in tuition revenue raised by the community college in FY2013—making the community college’s net cost $14.48 million. Shared services provided to the community college by UDC are not included in this budget.

To ensure that the community college has the organizational capacity necessary to achieve branch campus status, and can demonstrate authority and capacity for separate fiscal operations, we recommend that the Council direct $14.48 million of UDC’s FY2013 subsidy to the community college as a line-item in the UDC budget. Since this is only the net operating cost, it is critical that community college tuition collected by UDC also be passed through directly to the college.

We believe that the community college needs these resources in FY2013 because it is still in a start-up phase and must be given support to grow. However, the community college inherited some of its academic programs directly from UDC without an analysis of market demand or potential for cost savings. For example, some programs appear to have low enrollment and some courses are taught by UDC faculty that have workloads and pay scales more appropriate for a university than a community college. It may therefore be appropriate for the community college CEO, in partnership with the Board of Trustees, to conduct a thorough review of its academic programs in FY2013 in order to identify opportunities for adjustments.

Likewise, the community college’s workforce development and lifelong learning programs will account for approximately $5 million of the community college’s direct costs in FY2013. The cost of these programs, however, has exceeded the revenue they raise (by about $4 million in FY2012) because programs are mostly provided to residents for free or at a highly subsidized rate. As Attain notes, other institutions operate workforce development programs that result in net revenue, thereby supporting affordable degree programs. The District government, in concert with the Board of Trustees and the community college CEO, should decide what role it wants the community college to play in providing workforce development to enhance the employability of D.C. residents and the level at which it wants to subsidize those services.

Helping the Community College Move Beyond Branch Campus Status toward Separate Accreditation

The community college’s progress toward independence in FY2013, however, should not stop once it achieves branch campus status. Rather, separate accreditation should be pursued as soon as possible for the community college to provide it with the greatest opportunity to succeed. The community college and the flagship have diverging missions and different operating needs, and quite often compete for limited resources. Moving quickly toward separate accreditation can help alleviate this competition and tension between the two institutions.

As noted, the move to separate accreditation will likely take 3-4 years. However, the Council and the UDC Board of Trustees can take additional steps in FY2013 to help UDC and the community move further toward its next step—becoming “separately accreditable.”

To become separately accreditable, the community college must at a minimum have substantial financial and administrative independence from the flagship, including matters related to personnel, through policies adopted by the Board of Trustees.[3] Accordingly, we recommend that the D.C. Council direct the Board of Trustees to develop a plan for providing the community college with the following elements:

Periodic reporting of the community college CEO directly to the Board of Trustees regarding the state of the community college to ensure that the Trustees have direct oversight of the community college and its leadership. Until it achieves separate accreditation, the community college CEO will continue to report to the UDC President, who in turn continues to report to the Board of Trustees. However, periodic reporting by the community college CEO to the Board will allow the Board to better fulfill its oversight of the development of the community college.
Independent procurement authority for the community college to contract with external vendors for key services that it currently receives from UDC, but that don’t meet the needs of the community college. Since the additional cost of procuring such services is not included in the community college’s direct budget, the Board must determine how such services for the college would be funded and how UDC would realize cost savings associated with no longer providing certain services to the college.
A mechanism to formally recognize community college faculty and staff as a separate classification of employees within the UDC system so that workloads and pay scales appropriate for a community college can be established and necessary modifications to the UDC labor agreements can be negotiated.
A process for establishing a community college foundation so that it can expand its independent fundraising capacity.

To implement the elements of such a plan, the Board of Trustees may have to pass resolutions or take other actions in accordance with UDC’s governing requirements. Implementing this plan will also require open lines of communication and cooperation between the Board of Trustees, the UDC President, and the community college CEO because decisions about moving the community college to independence will impact the flagship.

III. UDC’s unsustainable financial structure must be addressed in order to successfully move the community college to independence.

UDC’s financial stability is essential to the community college’s success. The community college must depend on UDC’s own accreditation and legal status as it moves through the multi-year process described above. Indeed, Middle States is not likely to approve branch campus status and separate accreditation for the community college if it finds that UDC cannot afford those changes or if it views those changes as a threat to UDC’s own financial viability.

UDC’s Precarious Financial Condition:

Unfortunately, UDC already has significant financial challenges that will become more acute with the separation of the community college. UDC is relatively well-funded with a large public subsidy compared to peer universities. In the 2009-2010 school year, UDC’s appropriation of $16,785 per full-time equivalent (FTE) student was the highest in a group of 17 peer institutions and was more than double the group’s median of $7,500 per FTE.[4] At the same time, UDC’s costs per FTE student are higher than its peers in nearly every category. At $36,684 in 2009-2010, UDC’s total expenditures per FTE student were approximately 60 percent higher than the median expenditures of its peers.[5]

Despite having a relatively generous public appropriation, UDC’s very high costs per student have contributed to operating deficits over the past three years, which were funded through a spend-down of its reserves. UDC’s unrestricted net asset reserves are now less than $12.8 million, $4.8 million of which is restricted to support the new student center.[6] By contrast, a financially healthy institution of UDC’s size would typically have more than $50 million in reserves.[7] The university no longer has enough reserve funds to continue covering operating deficits as it has done in the past. Without substantially changing its cost structure or increasing its revenues, UDC runs the risk of defaulting on operating obligations in FY2013.

While it is true that the drawdown of reserves in FY 2011 and FY 2012 was accelerated by the creation of the community college, UDC’s high operating costs and low and declining enrollment at the flagship mean that its budget is unsustainable with or without the community college. Creation of the community college has underscored UDC’s underlying financial weakness and the need to bring costs in line with reasonable expectations of enrollment.

UDC’s Cost Drivers:

UDC’s high cost structure results in large part from a complicated legacy of historical factors. First, the university’s degree programs, faculty and staff, administrative systems, and facilities are all too large for the size of its current student body. UDC’s student body declined significantly during the District’s financial crisis in the mid-1990s, from roughly 10,000 undergraduates in fall 1994 to its lowest enrollment level of under 4,500 undergraduates in fall 1997.[8] Although UDC’s total undergraduate enrollment (community college and flagship) has increased since then, it has never surpassed 5,400 students.[9] The creation of the community college has also impacted the flagship’s enrollment. Since its establishment, the community college’s student body has grown while the flagship’s declined. In fall 2011, the community college had 2,529 students in academic programs compared to 2,129 in the flagship’s undergraduate program.[10] Additionally, over 2,600 individuals were enrolled in a course or program for general employment assistance, basic skills, or occupational skills training at the community college’s workforce development and lifelong learning program during the 2010-2011 program year.[11]

Second, UDC has high personnel costs. It has a professionally mature faculty with a high salary level relative to peer institutions. Nearly three-quarters of UDC’s faculty are full or associate professors as compared with a 40% average for peer institutions.[12] Salaries for all faculty are 33 percent above the median salary at peer institutions. Pay scales for administrative functions also appear to be high relative to compensation in the broader market. Moreover, some administrative areas seem to be overstaffed, in part because new employees with proficiency in new technologies have been hired while existing employees have been retained. UDC’s ability to adjust personnel costs is in part complicated by existing contracts with faculty and staff unions, which have not changed for years due to protracted collective bargaining. Existing contracts, although expired, continue to govern, and UDC and its unions have been unable to reach agreement on the terms of new contracts. It should be noted, however, that only half of UDC’s full-time faculty and staff belong to unions.

In addition to these legacy costs, recent efforts to transform UDC into a “university system” with a competitive, research-oriented flagship university and a community college are impacting UDC’s cost structure. In FY2010, the community college’s net direct cost was $3.1 million.[13] However, most of the costs experienced that year were already part of UDC’s overall cost structure and were associated with re-assignments of programs, faculty, and staff from university to the community college. In FY2011 and FY2012, the incremental net costs of operating the community college were $6.5 million and $7.8 million respectively. These are additional annual costs associated with starting up the community college; a large portion of these costs are operating costs associated with leases, operations, and maintenance of the community college’s facilities. New investments to transform the flagship, such as enhancements to the athletics program, and the development of a new student center and dormitories that are planned will further increase UDC’s operating costs.

These efforts are aimed at growing the student body in order to match the university’s large programmatic, administrative, and facilities structure. While growth at the community college has occurred and is likely to continue, aggressive growth of the flagship in the near-term will be challenging for three reasons. First, UDC’s enrollment trends over the past 15 years, and in particular declining enrollment at the flagship, does not set a strong precedent for growth. Second, while the District’s total population grew by 5 percent from 2000 to 2010, the number of residents under 18 actually declined over this period, from 114,992 in 2000 to 100,815 in 2010—an indication that UDC’s potential resident student population is shrinking.[14] Third, UDC must compete for students with several universities in the Washington region, as well as with public universities across the country, which D.C. residents can attend at in-state tuition rates due to the federal D.C. Tuition Assistance Grant (TAG) program.

In summary, UDC’s operating deficits, high cost structure, spend-down of its reserves, and unlikely potential for growth in student population at the flagship have together produced an unsustainable situation. And this situation has occurred at a moment when it is critical for UDC to become financially stable in FY2013 in order to move the community college to branch campus status and sustain the flagship. However, we believe UDC’s precarious financial condition offers an opportunity for the Board of Trustees and the District’s leadership to rethink the mission of the city’s public higher education system and better align it with the District’s needs. This re-visioning can help ensure the sustainability of both the community college and the flagship.

IV. UDC’s Board of Trustees, in concert with the District’s leaders, must develop a shared vision of public higher education for the city.

In order to move the community college toward independence while strengthening the flagship, UDC’s Board of Trustees must partner with the District’s elected officials to create a shared vision for public higher education for the city that is focused and realistic. UDC has suffered from mission confusion since its inception in the mid-1970s, when it was established as a consolidation of three different schools with three very different missions. This problem was exacerbated in the mid-1990s, when UDC, under financial duress, was forced to make major cuts even though a guiding plan had not been developed first.

This time, UDC’s right-sizing should be done in accordance with a thoughtful vision for a public education system that meets the current and future needs of our city and its residents. While it is not our task to develop this vision, we believe it should include an independently accredited community college, a law school, and an institutionally smaller but strengthened flagship with the capacity to grow according to demand and District priorities. We recommend that the Board of Trustees and the District‘s elected officials begin setting this vision immediately so that UDC can begin to take actions to right-size the flagship in accordance with priorities and move the community college toward independence in FY2013.

To ensure that this vision gets set and implemented, we recommend that funds provided to UDC by the city in FY2013 be conditioned on the development and implementation of a plan to right-size the university and move the community college to independence. We also believe that a portion of the District’s future higher education subsidies should be conditioned on meeting agreed-upon performance goals that are necessary to transform the District’s public higher education vision into a reality. Many states have higher education performance-based funding strategies that the District can look to, but it must first set priorities for what it wants its higher education system to accomplish.

V. UDC should undergo a major institutional right-sizing effort in FY2013 in order to become financially sustainable.

UDC must develop a plan to right-size the institution so that it: 1) better reflects the size and needs of its student body and the District of Columbia, 2) puts the institution on sound financial footing, and 3) ensures the future of the community college. This plan should be made in accordance with the vision to be developed for public higher education in the District. In fact, it should serve as the blueprint for achieving that vision. We recommend that the plan address how the university will cut costs to live within its means and a timetable for doing so. It’s possible that some of these changes may require short- term investments in order to achieve long-term cost savings. While we have not attempted to develop a complete list of all the elements to be included in such a plan, we believe that the plan should be based on a thorough review that includes the following:

Review academic programs at the flagship relative to market demand and determine how to adjust accordingly. We understand that UDC has reviewed programs and market demand—the findings of that work should be reviewed in the context of the vision for a right-sized UDC.
Review administrative areas to determine whether the staff is the right size, has the right skills, and are paid appropriate wages
Review information technology (IT) services to evaluate whether it would be more efficient for a host to provide infrastructure and core services
Review existing facilities to determine options for cost savings and evaluate whether existing facilities and planned capital projects are appropriate for a right-sized UDC

UDC’s right-sizing plan must also address personnel issues—personnel costs account for about 70 percent of UDC’s total costs and issues of staffing size and pay scale cut across all of the categories listed above. Rightsizing UDC will require the UDC Board, Administration, staff, and labor unions to work in partnership to develop staffing, work rules, and pay scales appropriate for a re-envisioned flagship and a separate community college. This will include reaching new labor agreements that meet these goals. There may be a role for the District’s leadership to play in helping UDC and its unions resolve key issues. To make such a partnership practical and viable, the UDC Board must first develop a plan that provides a clear vision of an attainable future for the university.

Thank you for your time today and your leadership on this critical issue.

[1] Accreditation ensures that educational institutions meet basic quality standards. It is required for students to transfer credits between educational institutions and receive federal financial aid, as well as for the institution to be eligible for federal funding and grants.
[2] Middle States Commission on Higher Education Policy Statement on Substantive Change, Effective November 18, 2010. Available on the web at http://www.msche.org/documents/updated-Substantive-Change-policy-11-18-10.pdf
[3] Middle States Commission on Higher Education Policy Statement on Separately Accreditable Institutions, available on the web at http://www.msche.org/?Nav1=POLICIES&Nav2=INDEX
[4] Attain Consulting’s analysis of data from NCES, IPEDS 2009-2010 GASB Finance File, 2009-2010 Instructional Activity File. Peer universities include Delaware State University, Alabama A&M University, Southern University and A&M College, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Virginia State University, Coppin State University, Fort Valley State University, Lincoln University, University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff, Fayetteville State University, Mansfield University of Pennsylvania, Eastern New Mexico University-Main Campus, Francis Marion University, and University of Houston-Victoria. University of the District of Columbia Report: Financial Assessment and Cost Drivers (Forthcoming, Spring 2012).
[5] Ibid.
[6] Attain Consulting’s analysis of UDC 2011/2012 financial data. Attain UDC Report (Forthcoming, Spring 2012).
[7] Ibid.
[8] NCES, IPEDS data center, available on the web at http://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/datacenter/
[9] Ibid.
[10] Presentation on UDC Budget Overview, Prepared for CC Transition Committee. Delivered by Steven Graubert, Managing Director for Finance, UDC, January 23, 2012.
[11] Presentation on Workforce Development and Lifelong Learning Student Data: Program Year 2011 and PY 2012 YTD. Prepared by Kairos Management, January 27, 2011. Program Year (PY) 2011 is from September 1, 2010 through August 31, 2011
[12] Attain Consulting’s analysis of data from NCES, IPEDS 2010-2011 Instructional Staff Salary File. Attain UDC Report (Forthcoming Spring 2012)
[13] All figures related to baseline and incremental costs associated with the community college are based on Attain consulting’s analysis of UDC budget figures. In FY2010, it cost a total of roughly $9.9 million. However, $6.8 million in revenue from the community college and workforce development programs was also raised that fiscal year, leaving the net cost of $3.1 million. Attain UDC Report (Forthcoming, Spring 2012)
[14] U.S. Census Bureau, 2010 and 2000 Censuses. The District’s total population was 601,723 in 2010 and 572,059 in 2000.

Authors

John W. Hill
Joshua M. Kern
Alice M. Rivlin
Walter Smith
Carrie L. Thornhill

Publication: D.C. Council Committee on Housing and Workforce Development

North Carolina Seeks Its Next Generation of Workers

Bruce Katz and Judith Rodin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 00:00:00 -0500

As states and metros work to build capacity in areas important to the next economy, they’re becoming increasingly aware of the need for a next generation workforce that’s up to the task. With an unemployment rate of 8.6 percent and 3.3 million job openings as of the end of October, it’s clear that skills development must be part of strategies to promote a broad-based, sustainable labor market recovery.

The North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) recognized that state-run community colleges have an important role to play in addressing this skills mismatch and increasing opportunities for people entering the workforce. Its SuccessNC initiative is working with all 58 community colleges in the state to strengthen the college and career pathways available to North Carolina students, with the ultimate goal of doubling the number of students completing career credentials by 2020. By fostering greater collaboration among the state’s community colleges and developing rigorous performance measures to assess and improve college offerings, SuccessNC is working to leverage the collective power of North Carolina’s community colleges to improve student outcomes across the state.

Encouraging knowledge-sharing among practitioners is central to SuccessNC’s mission. From February to October 2010, NCCCS representatives visited each of North Carolina’s 58 community college campuses to discuss SuccessNC’s aims and to learn more about each school’s triumphs and challenges. Over the course of the tour, colleges presented more than 200 best practices related to improving student success, access to course offerings and program quality. In addition, colleges identified specific barriers impeding their efforts to improve student outcomes. In the months ahead, a committee of NCCCS associate vice presidents will work to resolve those barriers that fall under the system’s purview.

Since the tour’s conclusion, SuccessNC has compiled information gathered through these listening sessions and made it available on its website. Best practices can be accessed through a searchable innovations database that provides a brief summary and point of contact for each innovation. This database offers a new resource for community college practitioners throughout North Carolina and beyond. “We want to make education more accessible. We want to improve the quality of our academic and training programs. And we want to increase the number of our students that leave our colleges prepared to be an employee, an employer and to move on to further education,” said NCCCS President Scott Ralls. “By sharing these ideas and innovations, we can learn from one another.”

Authors

Bruce Katz
Judith Rodin

Publication: The Atlantic Cities

Policies to Reduce High-Tenured Displaced Workers’ Earnings Losses Through Retraining

Louis S. Jacobson , Robert J. LaLonde and Daniel G. Sullivan — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 00:00:00 -0500

ABSTRACT

High-tenured displaced workers often experience significant earnings losses that persist for the rest of their working lives. A well-targeted training initiative has the potential to substantially reduce permanent earnings losses for those displaced workers who have the academic preparation, work experience, and interest to complete high-return retraining, with a rate of return on par with, if not larger than, that reported for formal schooling of young people. Current governmental training programs do not provide adequate resources to finance the long-term training needed by displaced workers to meaningfully offset their losses, nor do they provide the right incentives to get longer-term retraining. This paper presents five comprehensive reforms targeted specifically at retraining displaced workers experiencing significant earnings loss: (1) establish a Displaced Worker Training (DWT) Program to provide sizeable grants for longer-term training; (2) use honest brokers to assess and counsel grantees; (3) provide incentives and performance standards for participants and institutions; (4) evaluate training programs and disseminate best practices; and (5) shore up community colleges’ capacity to provide high-quality training, especially during tough economic times.

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Authors

Louis S. Jacobson
Robert J. LaLonde
Daniel G. Sullivan

Publication: The Hamilton Project

Raising Job Quality and Skills for American Workers: Creating More-Effective Education and Workforce Development Systems in the States

Harry J. Holzer — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 13:36:00 -0500

ABSTRACT

To improve the employment rates and earnings of Americans workers, we need to create more-coherent and more-effective education and workforce development systems, focusing primarily (though not exclusively) on disadvantaged youth and adults, and with education and training more clearly targeted towards firms and sectors that provide good-paying jobs. This paper proposes a new set of competitive grants from the federal government to states that would fund training partnerships between employers in key industries, education providers, workforce agencies, and intermediaries at the state level, plus a range of other supports and services. The grants would especially reward the expansion of programs that appear successful when evaluated with randomized controlled trial (RCT) techniques. The evidence suggests that these grants could generate benefits that are several times larger than their costs, including higher earnings and lower unemployment rates among the disadvantaged.

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Authors

Harry J. Holzer

Publication: The Hamilton Project

How Manufacturing Can Lead to Future Economic Prosperity

Martin Neil Baily — Wed, 29 Jun 2011 16:57:00 -0400

The recovery from the Great Recession is taking much longer than most forecasters expected. With the benefit of hindsight, perhaps it is not surprising that it is taking a long time to overcome the massive slump in real estate and the accompanying loss of household wealth. Consumers are still holding too much debt, are worried about their jobs, and are understandably reluctant to spend. America needs all the sources of growth that it can find, right now. What is the role of the manufacturing sector in driving the recovery?

Over the past 13 years, over a third of the country’s manufacturing jobs have disappeared, either due to increased productivity and automation or outsourcing overseas. Prior to the recession, the trade deficit peaked at around $800 billion a year, with the deficit in manufactured goods accounting for the bulk of it. While the problems in America’s manufacturing sector are relatively easy to identify, as President Obama highlighted during his speech yesterday in Iowa, there is no one silver bullet that can instantly restore balance to America’s economy. Instead, coordinated long- and short-term action is needed to help boost American manufacturing competitiveness and stimulate our economy. It is not realistic to expect that manufacturing will be a major source of jobs in the recovery. Employment in the sector is currently growing slowly and should continue to grow at a modest pace for the next couple of years as the recovery proceeds and strengthens, but the long run force of productivity increase will mean that producing more goods will not require a lot of additional workers. Nevertheless, restoring the competitiveness of America's manufacturing sector is still a vital goal. In the years ahead, we must not return to the huge trade deficits of the first decade of this century and the endless foreign borrowing that financed them. America must pay its way in the world and not add to the foreign debts we hand on to our children. Moreover, if manufacturing does not become globally competitive, it could lose a million more jobs over the next ten years.

During the course of his remarks, President Obama highlighted an issue I have long championed as a way to spur U.S. manufacturing over the long term – increased support for America’s community colleges. Good community colleges work closely with local employers to ensure the training they provide matches the needs of area workplaces and the National Association of Manufacturers has identified community colleges as the place where production workers can receive training in modern manufacturing techniques. Additional federal funding for community colleges would be a good investment, but realistically that is unlikely to happen any time soon. Even without any additional funding, states and cities can greatly improve the quality of the education available to students. Today's community colleges range from terrific to terrible and if best practice teaching methods can be spread more widely, they can contribute to closing the skills gap that is hurting the US manufacturing sector even now.

While the Alliance for American Manufacturing seems concerned that some think tanks consider manufacturing “yesterday, instead of tomorrow,” my colleagues and I at Brookings have long been committed to the idea that a strong manufacturing sector is key to the future prosperity and long-term competitiveness of the United States. In our recently published paper “Building a Long-Term Strategy for Growth through Innovation,” we proposed several short- and long-term recommendations to jump start manufacturing and put America back on the path towards healthy economic growth. Together, we see the future of the American economy as:

Innovation Fueled: Taking advantage of technology

Short term: Support basic scientific research by extending the R&D tax credit
Long term: Create a better system for commercializing research from universities
Long term: Streamline the process for approving patents
Long term: Step up the enforcement of intellectual property protection, especially overseas

Export Oriented: Seizing the opportunities of world markets

Short term: Ratify new trade agreements in Asia and Latin America
Long term: Consolidate federal support for manufacturing research into a single Manufacturing Innovation Fund

Opportunity Rich: Investing in intellectual capital

Short term: Double the number of H-1B Visas
Long term: Establish national postsecondary goals and create a performance measurement system to support the effective use of federal resources

Low Carbon: Helping promote energy security and sustainability

Short term: Create and fund a network of energy discovery institutes at leading research universities
Short term: Authorize a National Infrastructure Bank to promote investment
Long term: Authorize a Green Bank; Fully fund and implement the Green Bank and Infrastructure Bank

Authors

Martin Neil Baily

Image Source: Â© Larry Downing / Reuters

Community Colleges and Regional Recovery: Strategies for State Action

Richard Kazis — Wed, 18 May 2011 00:00:00 -0400

Governors and other state leaders are under pressure to increase the odds that their states will exit the recession poised to be productive, attractive to employers, and competitive for jobs and wealth creation. One fact is inescapable: to achieve economic recovery and longer-run prosperity, states must produce many more skilled workers with postsecondary credentials, not merely short-term training after high school.

The current economic climate has placed renewed priority on the performance and potential of community colleges, the primary postsecondary institution serving local and regional workforce needs. These institutions are critically important to individuals seeking higher skills and to employers looking for qualified workers. States that fail to align their community college goals with economic development efforts to address their human capital challenges run the risk of losing out in the competition for good jobs and sustainable development.

However, states that maximize their return on every public investment dollar to prepare for long-term economic growth can use the current moment to their advantage. By championing an integrated workforce and economic development strategy based on improving student success in community colleges and promoting regional progress through partnerships, they can ensure a stable supply of skilled workers for area employers. To that end, states should embrace the following agenda:

Articulate a clear vision for the alignment of workforce development, postsecondary education, and economic development at the regional level, and regularly publicize progress;
Improve student success and credential completion in community colleges; and
Identify and target priority clusters and industry sectors critical to regional competitiveness and expansion, promoting partnerships that engage community colleges in economic development

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Authors

Richard Kazis

Image Source: © Brian Snyder / Reuters

Budget Hearing for the University of the District of Columbia

Alice M. Rivlin — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Dr. Alice Rivlin provided testimony before the Council of the District of Columbia, advocating for more resources for the new Community College of the District of Columbia (CCDC).

Good afternoon Chairman Gray and members of the Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to testify at this important hearing on the Fiscal Year 2011 budget for the University of the District of Columbia (UDC). My colleague, Walter Smith, and I will focus briefly the how the budget can help define the role of the new Community College of the District of Columbia (CCDC) and enhance the ability of both CCDC and UDC to serve DC students effectively.

As you know, DC Appleseed and Greater Washington Research at Brookings have produced reports pointing out the District’s need for a strong community college—in addition to a strong public university—and options for creating one. Most recently, we jointly sponsored a study by JBL Associates that assessed the feasibility of incubating a community college at UDC while it evolved toward independence. We are pleased that CCDC—which opened at UDC in the fall 2009—is off to a good start. Under the leadership of the Community College CEO Dr. Jonathan Gueverra, and with the support of UDC President Alan Sessoms, CCDC has taken over UDC’s associate degree, certificate, and workforce development programs, launched new liberal studies and continuing education programs, and assembled a student success team. There are currently over 2,300 students registered in CCDC’s degree and certificate programs, and another 1,500 in workforce development and continuing education.

Separating CCDC’s programs and student body from the flagship university was a critical first step in establishing an independent DC community college. In order to carry out their respective missions and serve Washington’s post-secondary students well, however, CCDC and UDC must continue to separate their functions and services. We appreciate the opportunity to offer our views today on how the budget process can move the community college toward independence.

1. CCDC Needs Personnel and Administrative Authority to Carry Out Its Mission

CCDC and UDC have made remarkable progress defining their separate identities in the short time—less than a year—since CCDC was created. In the next year, however, CCDC needs to spell out more clearly what kind of educational opportunities it will (and will not) offer to the Washington community. As the new institution in town, CCDC should introduce itself to the community and highlight its unique mission and aspirations, as well as its potential for complimenting and cooperating with UDC’s flagship university.

As we pointed out in our reports, the mission of a community college is different from that of a university and requires a different kind of faculty and administrative structure. In general, university faculty have both research and teaching responsibilities, while community college faculty focus primarily on teaching, often have practical career experience and usually do not hold a doctorate. Community colleges’ open admissions, flexibility, and affordability attract a higher mix of students who are academically at-risk—trying to balance school with family and work obligations, returning to school after several years out of school, or likely to need substantial developmental education. Accordingly, community colleges are increasingly reforming their administrative structures and operating procedures to support students at academic risk and maximize their success. Such administrative features include data systems designed to track student persistence, a streamlined delivery system for student and academic services, and financial aid policies that meet the needs of low-income students and working adults.

Since a significant portion of CCDC’s student body is at academic risk, it is crucial that the community college’s faculty and administrative structure enables students to achieve their educational goals, whether they be upgrading career skills, earning a certificate or degree, or transferring to a four-year college. Many CCDC graduates will in time be seeking admission to UDC’s flagship, so it is especially important that the two institutions work together to align their curricula and make student transitions easy.

In order to carry out its mission in a cost-effective manner, CCDC must be able to establish its own faculty contract—one that suits the demands of a community college. This requisite will be difficult to accomplish as long as CCDC operates with UDC’s salary scale which is gauged to a traditional university faculty. CCDC must also establish modern, efficient administrative and data collection systems that meet the distinct needs of its students, faculty, and administration.

2. CCDC Needs a Strategic Operating Plan that Lays Out the Path to Independence

In order to move toward these important benchmarks, CCDC needs a strategic operating plan that will detail the steps and costs of separating operationally where necessary from the flagship. A strategic operating plan would also lay out the programs that CCDC aspires to offer and a plan for acquiring associated faculty, curricula, professional accreditation, and equipment; estimates for annual enrollment that demonstrate CCDC’s planned growth; and an administrative and facilities plan that will accomplish over time CCDC’s deliberate separation from UDC with independent accreditation.

We appreciate your support for CCDC’s development of such a plan and trust that you will be able to work with Dr. Sessoms and Dr. Gueverra to identify resources from the FY2011 budget that can be applied to this purpose.

3. CCDC Needs its Own Facilities

We believe it is important that CCDC have its own facilities in order to advance the community college’s independent identity and to accommodate increased enrollment. The $10.6 million budgeted for the community college in UDC’s FY2011 budget does not seem to include expenditures for facilities nor does the University’s capital budget specify facility plans for CCDC.

We understand there has been a great deal of discussion about various facilities—including 801 North Capitol Street and the former Bertie Backus Middle School. Regardless of which location is ultimately chosen, there should be sufficient funds available to secure facilities that can accommodate the community college's planned programs, as well as its anticipated increase in enrollment.

The cost of leasing a new facility should be clearly delineated as a line item in the community college portion of UDC’s FY2011 budget. Moreover, renovation costs for Backus or any additional CCDC facilities should be designated as such in UDC’s capital budget. Further, we believe that any revenue provided by the DC government for CCDC’s facilities expenses should be dedicated specifically to this purpose and identified in the budget allocation as such.

I will now turn to Walter Smith who will talk about how CCDC, UDC, and the District government must start planning now to achieve budget goals for FY2012.

Authors

Alice M. Rivlin

Publication: Council of the District of Columbia

Image Source: © Robert Galbraith / Reuters

The End of the American Graduation Initiative

Alan Berube — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 12:15:00 -0400

Buried beneath the much-deserved hullaballoo over the passage of health care reform were big changes that the reconciliation bill makes to the federal student loan program. (Fortunately, Jonathan Chait has been on top of it, as he recently wrote in a blog entry for The New Republic.) The law will take much of the savings generated by moving from private, subsidized lending to direct federal lending and use it on an expanded Pell Grant, which should help more low- and moderate-income students access that oversubscribed tuition assistance program.

Less noticed, however, is a provision that was in the House-passed Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act (SAFRA) this fall, but dropped from the final version that passed last night. It would have implemented an Obama administration proposal--the American Graduation Initiative (AGI)--announced last summer to invest roughly $12 billion in community colleges over 10 years, with the goal of greatly improving their performance in getting students through to earn degrees and credentials, and increasing the number of community college graduates by 5 million over that time. Given the state of the economy, community colleges are being asked to do more than ever without the resources and strategies to match. All of which made the plan especially timely. But with Pell Grant spending up due to the poor state of the economy, and the pressure to keep the total cost of the bill down while achieving expanded health insurance coverage and deficit reduction, the AGI got left on the cutting-room floor.

So while there’s much to admire in one of the singular domestic legislative achievements in recent memory, let’s also say a word of remembrance for the community college agenda. These institutions have been the neglected stepchild of federal higher ed policy for so long, that it was really a remarkable moment when the administration and the House moved to make a substantial bet on their future. It’s not likely that community colleges will see another opportunity like this one for some time. And with their substantial budgetary reliance on state and local funding, the road ahead—even with expanded Pell Grants—isn’t pretty.

Community colleges weren’t totally left out of the final bill. They will receive $2 billion over the next few years to help dislocated workers access training programs, and that’s surely important work given the depressed nature of the economy in many parts of the country. But that’s more of the traditional stuff, and falls well short of the potential that the AGI had for transforming the nation’s two-year institutions, and valuing them as we do their four-year counterparts. R.I.P. for now, AGI, and here’s hoping this isn’t the last we hear about an expanded role for community colleges in national higher ed policy.

Authors

Alan Berube

Publication: The Avenue, The New Republic

Image Source: © Robert Galbraith / Reuters

Community Colleges: America's Forgotten Institutions of Higher Education

Darrell M. West — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:00:00 -0500

With double-digit unemployment, you would think community colleges would be at the center of our national agenda. After all, there are 1,200 such schools in America and they enroll nearly 7 million individuals. This amounts to around 40 percent of all the post-secondary students in the United States. And these places focus on working class and minority kids who are suffering the brunt of the country's dismal economic situation.

Yet community colleges are America's forgotten institutions of higher education. Once called "junior colleges", they still are seen as secondary to our nation's four-year colleges and universities. One D.C.-based education columnist even inked a widely-publicized commentary a few years ago entitled "Why I Ignore Community Colleges".

In general, people don't pay sufficient attention to education at any level. According to a recent Brookings Institution study, only 1.4 percent of all the national news coverage in the first nine months of 2009 from television, newspapers, news Web sites, and radio dealt with elementary, secondary, or post-secondary education.

This paucity of coverage is not unique to 2009. In 2008, only 0.7 percent of national news coverage involved education, while 1.0 percent did so in 2007. The lack of emphasis on education makes it difficult for the public to follow policy developments and understand how to improve academic performance.

But community colleges fare especially poorly in the constellation of American news coverage. Of all the education reporting across all levels, only 2.9 percent is devoted to two-year institutions of higher learning, compared to 12.5 percent for colleges and 14.5 percent for universities (the rest goes to pre-school, elementary, or secondary schools).

The inattention to community colleges is noteworthy because even though they enroll 6.7 million students compared to 11.2 million for colleges and universities, two-year schools attract only one-tenth the news coverage of four-year institutions. From the standpoint of national media coverage, community colleges are invisible.

The lack of coverage reflects a not-so-subtle class divide in American higher education. There is a clear hierarchy of schools based on prestige, cost, and the type of students admitted. At the top are Ivy League universities and other elite private institutions. Then, there are the so-called "public Ivies", i.e., top-tier public universities across the country, and the public universities of small and medium-sized states.

Community colleges sit at the bottom of the social status and financial priority list. They are the least expensive, enroll large numbers of students, feature crowded and poorly-equipped classrooms, and have many poor pupils who work part-time in order to finance their education.

Beyond the funding and social inequities, the news media perpetuate inequality by the way they cover higher education. During admissions season, prominent national newspapers run stories about the stressful pressures of getting into elite private schools. Ivy League universities routinely admit only about one-tenth of their applicants. Some parents worry so much about admissions that they pay "independent college counselors" thousands of dollars to provide advice to their sons and daughters on how to write application essays, dress properly, take the right classes, and engage in helpful extra-curricular activities.

The social and economic plight of the poor or minority student who works part-time to pay for classes at a two-year school attracts far less attention. Contrary to the normal reasoning in most other parts of the economy, the most expensive schools are seen as delivering the greatest value for students. Community college students suffer in silence and get little help from government officials or high-priced consultants. The crucial role of these schools in training students and preparing for the jobs of tomorrow is not covered. If we want our country to rebound, we need to devote more attention to community colleges and recognize the many ways they contribute to long-term economic development.

Authors

Darrell M. West

Publication: The Huffington Post

Image Source: © Brian Snyder / Reuters

Building a Strong, Independent DC Community College

Alice M. Rivlin and Martha Ross — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:17:00 -0500

A report commissioned by Greater Washington Research at Brookings and DC Appleseed underscores the need for a strong community college in the District of Columbia. The report, conducted by JBL Associates, recognizes the steps already taken by the new Community College of the District of Columbia (CCDC) and recommends that the city support CCDC in moving towards independence from the University of the District of Columbia, with its own administration, board of trustees, budget and academic accreditation. The report also proposes that CCDC create partnerships with one or more of the area’s community colleges in order to supplement its own programs and courses in its start-up years.

The report was the subject of a roundtable convened by Vincent C. Gray, Chairman of the Council of the District of Columbia. The roundtable, “Implementation of an Independent Community College in the District of Columbia” included testimony from Brookings, JBL Associates, and DC Appleseed.

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Budget 2010: New Investments in Transforming America’s Schools and Workforce

Alan Berube — Fri, 15 May 2009 11:37:12 -0400

In speaking about how to resolve the economic woes facing the nation, President Obama has consistently cited three investment priorities as essential for achieving long-run, sustainable economic growth: clean energy, health care, and education. With respect to the latter, the Metro Program has argued in its Blueprint for American Prosperity initiative that improving the education and skills of American workers would contribute greatly to more robust and widely-shared economic prosperity.

The detailed FY 2010 budget reveals many elements of the administration’s strategy to achieve needed reforms in schooling and worker skills. In several respects, the FY 2010 detailed budgets for the Department of Education and Department of Labor continue efforts initiated by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA). These include:

$1.5 billion proposed for Title I School Improvement Grants, in addition to $3 billion in ARRA, and an increase of $1 billion over regular 2009 appropriations. These grants to states assist schools identified as in need of improvement for failing to meet Adequate Yearly Progress benchmarks for at least two consecutive years. As Education Secretary Duncan outlined in a speech at Brookings, he intends to use these funds to focus on turning around the lowest-performing 1 percent of U.S. schools. The budget also proposes that states apply 40 percent of these funds to middle and high schools, which the department argues receive a less-than-proportionate share of Title I assistance. The significant increase in School Improvement Grants is offset by a proposed cut in Title I Basic Grants, which spread money very thinly across thousands of school districts, many with low levels of student poverty
An additional $100 million proposed for the What Works and Innovation Fund, on top of the $650 million provided in ARRA. These funds would continue to support grants to school districts and partnerships between districts and non-profit organizations to scale up models that have a demonstrated track record of closing achievement gaps. This idea was described in “Changing the Game,” a Brookings Blueprint paper by Sara Mead and Andy Rotherham published last year
$517 million proposed for the Teacher Incentive Fund, on top of $200 million in ARRA, and a dramatic increase over the $97 million appropriated for 2009. These funds support development and implementation of performance-based compensation systems, linked to student achievement, for personnel in high-needs schools. This proposal is designed to further one of Secretary Duncan’s key priorities, indicated in the assurances states must make to receive ARRA education dollars, to attract highly effective teachers to the schools and classrooms most in need of their talents. An increasing preponderance of educational research has reached the conclusion that teacher effectiveness is the most important in-school factor influencing student achievement. The fund seeks to overcome some of the well-documented barriers to staffing high-poverty urban schools with high-performing teachers
Building on ARRA’s $17 billion in Pell Grant funding, which helps lower-income students pay for post-secondary education, the FY 2010 budget proposes to make Pell Grants a mandatory, rather than discretionary, program, and to index maximum awards to inflation in future years. As others have noted, this is a big change in the federal student loan system, one that would add much greater predictability to lower-income students’ financial decisions around attending college. Improving higher education access for this population is key to increasing social mobility. The $47 billion, five-year cost of the proposal would be offset in part by eliminating the Federal Family Education Loan program, in favor of direct lending by the Department of Education
Finally, the Department of Labor budget proposes $114 million for the YouthBuild program, which would follow $50 million in ARRA funding and a $70 million appropriation for FY 2009. YouthBuild provides job training to out-of-school youth aged 16 to 24, who split their time between a construction site and a classroom as they earn a GED or high school diploma. The department’s Employment and Training Administration (ETA), which oversees the program, is placing greater emphasis on green construction techniques among its grantees. Interestingly, ETA would also devote a significant portion of its $11.6 million proposed evaluation budget to a randomized trial evaluation of YouthBuild

The detailed budget also includes several items of note that do not grow out of the recovery package, but do have particular metropolitan relevance, including priorities identified in the Blueprint initiative.

First, as described in an earlier analysis of the FY 2010 budget blueprint, the Department of Education would operate a new College Access and Completion Fund to support partnerships between the federal government and states to enhance college completion, particularly for students from lower-income backgrounds. This program would be operated out of the Office of Federal Student Aid, and that the program would be supported by mandatory funding of $2.5 billion over five years. Brookings has argued that a significant portion of the fund—at least half—be devoted to bolstering student success in community colleges, which currently enroll more than half of undergraduate black and Latino students. (The budget does not, however, envision additional direct federal support to community colleges, which Brookings has argued is necessary for achieving the president’s goal of recapturing American leadership in higher educational attainment by 2020.)

Second, the Department of Education’s budget proposal also includes a greatly expanded focus on early childhood education, with several new and expanded programs proposed, including:

Title I Early Childhood Grants would provide $500 million to states to make matching grants to school districts that use Title I funds to invest in early childhood education
The Early Learning Challenge Fund would fund a $300 million competitive program to states to enhance coordination among and raise the quality of early learning programs
Early Reading First, which funds competitive grants to expand literacy services for preschool-aged children, would receive an increase of $50 million over 2009 appropriations
$10 million in one-year planning grants for a Promise Neighborhoods initiative, supporting non-profit, community based organizations in low-income areas to design comprehensive programs for children, modeled on the successful Harlem Children’s Zone

These proposals would undoubtedly provide significant support to large cities, where the child poverty rate is much higher than the national average, and help more kids enter school prepared to learn. As others have pointed out, however, the effectiveness of these investments will depend greatly on the details of implementation and coordination with related programs.

Third, the Department of Labor proposes a new $135 million Career Pathways Innovation Fund, to replace the existing Community-Based Job Training Program (funded at $125 million in 2009). This fund will administer competitive grants to individual or groups of community colleges that focus explicitly on establishing career pathway programs. These programs have a clear sequence of coursework, multiple entry and exit points to accommodate learners at different levels, and often include links to basic services. Several states have implemented a career pathways model for aligning community college workforce preparation efforts with state workforce and economic development systems, and the fund would presumably build upon those initiatives. The proposal’s focus on community colleges acknowledges part of their role in building a stronger national economy.

Fourth, and finally, Labor proposes to use the bulk ($50 million of $57 million) of its FY 2010 pilots, demonstrations, and research budget to examine transitional job programs, specifically those serving noncustodial parents. These programs combine short-term subsidized employment with case management services to help individuals facing significant barriers to employment. Improving workforce participation among non-custodial parents could benefit many children as well, since it may help to increase child support compliance. Labor would work jointly with the departments of Health and Human Services and Justice to conduct the pilot, and learn which models work best, and most cost-effectively, for this disadvantaged population.

Overall, the President’s FY 2010 budget envisions a strengthened federal commitment to improving education and enhancing worker skills. Many of the strategies the administration proposes to pursue in this arena could have meaningful impacts in urban and metropolitan communities, though much will depend on how legislation evolves and programs are implemented. Nevertheless, these ideas represent a significant step toward a national economic strategy that invests strategically in human capital to improve our collective prosperity.

Authors

Alan Berube

Transforming America’s Community Colleges: A Federal Policy Proposal To Expand Opportunity and Promote Economic Prosperity

Sara Goldrick-Rab, Douglas N. Harris, Gregory Kienzl and Christopher Mazzeo — Thu, 07 May 2009 00:00:00 -0400

View the policy brief »

To renew America’s status as the world’s leader in college attainment, the federal government needs to transform America’s community colleges and equip them for the 21st century. This long-overdue investment should establish national goals and a related performance measurement system; provide resources to drive college performance toward those goals; stimulate greater innovation in community college policies and practices to enhance the quality of subbaccalaureate education; and support data systems to track student and institutional progress and performance.

America’s Challenge
Over the last two centuries, the United States created an advantage over other countries by helping our citizens attain formal education, generating an able workforce and technological advancement. Yet U.S. higher educational attainment, long considered a ladder to economic and social success, has stalled, and now reinforces inequalities between rich and poor America. Community colleges represent an affordable, accessible route for a wide income spectrum of students to access well-paying, high-demand jobs, as well as further education. But low degree completion rates at these institutions raise serious challenges for public policy efforts to achieve robust, broad-based economic growth.

Limitations of Existing Federal Policy
Between 2000-2001 and 2005-2006 total enrollment in community colleges grew by 2.3 million students, more than in any other higher educational sector. The current economic downturn is spurring further increases. Yet community colleges receive less than one-third the level of direct federal government support as do public four-year colleges. This matters as economic research indicates that a relative decline in post-secondary funding diminishes degree completion. While all public colleges and universities rely on non-tuition revenue, community colleges depend disproportionately upon state and local governments, currently under severe budget pressure. Only the federal government has the capacity to raise expectations for community college performance and support the necessary investments to achieve those goals at a scale commensurate with the growing demands facing over 1,000 community colleges nationwide.

A New Federal Approach
The new administration and Congress should transform our community colleges into engines of opportunity and prosperity by targeting new investments to those colleges that succeed in helping their students succeed. To that end, the federal government should:

Establish national postsecondary goals and create a performance measurement system to support the effective use of federal resources
Double its current level of support in order to account for more than 10 percent of community colleges’ budgets, ultimately awarding threequarters of these funds based on colleges’ performance in meeting key goals around student credit, credential, and degree completion
Stimulate instructional innovations and practices to increase the quality of community college education, by devoting half of the administration’s proposed $2.5 billion state-federal partnership fund to improve and evaluate practices enhancing sub-baccalaureate education
Support the improvement of student data systems necessary to measure and track college student outcomes, guide funding, improve accountability, and promote continuous improvement in educational quality

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Community Colleges Offer Education Opportunities to Growing Number of Students

Authors

Sara Goldrick-Rab
Douglas N. Harris
Gregory Kienzl
Christopher Mazzeo

Transforming America’s Community Colleges

Thu, 07 May 2009 14:00:00 -0400

Event Information

May 7, 2009
2:00 PM - 4:00 PM EDT

Falk Auditorium
The Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC

In order to renew America’s status as the world’s leader in college attainment, the federal government needs to transform America’s community colleges and equip them for the 21st century. A new report by University of Wisconsin Assistant Professor Sara Goldrick-Rab and co-authors from the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings argues that this long-overdue investment should establish national goals and a related performance measurement system; provide resources to drive college performance towards those goals; stimulate greater innovation in community college policies and practices to enhance the quality of sub-baccalaureate education; and generate data systems that can track student and institutional progress and performance over time.

On May 7, the Metropolitan Policy Program hosted a discussion on this new report with the lead author, Goldrick-Rab. Cecilia Rouse, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, was a featured panelist. LaGuardia Community College President Gail Mellow; Senior Policy Officer Tom Dawson of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation; and former commissioner for the Indiana Commission on Higher Education, Stanley G. Jones, discussed the paper’s findings and implications. Alan Berube, senior fellow and research director of the Metropolitan Policy Program, delivered introductory remarks and moderated the discussion.

After the program, the panelists took audience questions.

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Transforming America’s Community Colleges

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Event Materials

20090507_community_colleges

Participants

Panelists

Sara Goldrick-Rab

Assistant Professor of Educational Policy Studies and Sociology, WISCAPE Scholar, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Cecilia Rouse

Member, White House Council of Economic Advisers

Gail Mellow

President, LaGuardia Community College

Tom Dawson

Senior Policy Officer, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Stanley G. Jones

Former Commissioner, Indiana Commission for Higher Education (1995–2009)

Community Colleges and the National Economy

Alan Berube — Fri, 01 May 2009 11:40:28 -0400

Senior Fellow Alan Berube says community colleges offer educational opportunities to a growing number of students and are a critical part of the national economy and our metropolitan areas. He discusses a new paper that was released on May 7 at the event "Transforming America’s Community Colleges: A Federal Policy Proposal to Expand Opportunity and Promote Economic Prosperity."

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Community Colleges Offer Education Opportunities to Growing Number of Students

Human Capital and Support for Low-Income Workers

Alan Berube — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 00:00:00 -0500

In his address to the joint session of Congress Feb. 24, the president announced that education is one of three areas in which his administration intends to increase its investments in coming years. In particular, he challenged all Americans to gain a post-secondary degree or certificate, setting a goal that by 2020, the United States should once again have the highest rate of college degree attainment in the world. The president’s FY 2010 budget overview narrative goes some way towards supporting these priorities, in part by expanding upon the down payments contained in the recovery package.

The budget commits to several increased investments across the education continuum, from early childhood to college. At the K-12 level, it proposes continued support for an Innovation Fund created through the recovery package. While the details of how the fund will operate are still coming into focus, the dollars are intended to help demonstrably successful school systems and non-profit organizations expand their work or test new approaches in closing the achievement gap. Building on local innovation is a promising direction for federal policy to help tackle the toughest urban education challenges.

At the post-secondary level, the budget places hopeful new emphasis on graduating more students from college. As we’ve noted, community colleges enroll increasing numbers of students, but for several reasons fail to get most of them—particularly those from lower-income backgrounds—through to a degree or certificate. A proposed five-year, $2.5 billion Access and Completion Incentive Fund would support state-level efforts to help these students succeed. The key here will be to focus on outcomes, driving dollars toward institutions that both serve the neediest students, and help them succeed in gaining credentials that have real labor market value.

Of course, promoting economic growth and reducing income inequality via education is a long-term, generational strategy. Complementing that are the budget signals indicating increased assistance for lower-income workers, especially through the tax code. It proposes to make permanent and in some cases enhance tax changes in the recovery package targeted to these workers and their families, such as the Making Work Pay Tax Credit, and a more generous Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit. The budget actually proposes that the Making Work Pay credit act as an “escape valve” to help offset the impact of higher energy prices on low- to middle-income families that would result from a cap-and-trade system on carbon emissions.

Finally, the appendix to the budget narrative includes a little-noticed proposal to eliminate the Advance Earned Income Tax Credit. Perhaps it’s little noticed because it’s so little used; less than 1 percent of all EITC dollars are paid out through this program, which operates through employers to put a portion of a prospective recipient’s EITC into her paychecks. Getting more credit dollars to families throughout the year is a good idea for several reasons—but the existing Advance EITC has proven ill-suited to the task. We hope the administration follows the example of most other countries, and adopts a new mechanism that pays a portion of the credit directly to eligible filers throughout the year.

Authors

Alan Berube

Stimulus for America’s Community Colleges

Alan Berube and Sara Goldrick-Rab — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 16:32:00 -0500

Many people in the education sector are rooting for the economic recovery package now working its way through Congress.

That’s because the package’s education component—an estimated $150 billion in the House plan—represents a central part of the Obama administration’s efforts to lay the groundwork for future economic growth. These investments can produce tremendous returns, driving long-run employment and earnings gains, and increasing the chances that future generations will become well-educated.

When it comes to investments in higher education, however, President Obama and congressional leaders should exercise focus. Resources should be targeted in ways that stimulate enhanced educational attainment, and close disparities in degree completion.

To that end, the recovery package—and future federal higher education policy—must do more to help transform America’s community colleges.

Faced with high tuition costs, a weak economy, and increased competition for admission to four-year colleges, students today are more likely than at any other point in history to attend one of the nation’s 1,100 community colleges. Annually, community college enrollment is increasing at more than twice the rate of that at four-year colleges, by 2.3 million students in the first half of this decade alone.

The rise of these institutions reflects their important roles in training workers, especially first-generation college students, for well-paying, high-demand jobs and in providing students a bridge to even higher levels of education.

We need to get more out of the system, however. Columbia University researchers estimate that the community college dropout rate is 50 percent. Despite the fact that community college degree and certificate holders earn considerably more than workers with only a high school diploma, just one-third of students who entered a community college in 1995 completed a degree of any kind by 2001. With many of the fastest-growing occupations requiring some post-secondary education, but not necessarily a bachelor’s degree, serious challenges await if community college performance does not improve.

Part of the problem lies in the way we fund community colleges. Owing to their historical role in serving local labor markets, community colleges are hampered by a heavy financial dependence on states and localities, where negative budget outlooks today portend deep funding cuts. Moreover, they are funded primarily based on enrollment, without regard to whether their students earn degrees or get good jobs. This gears community colleges' incentives toward inputs and process, rather than outcomes like student success.

Given the critical function of community colleges for meeting our nation’s future economic needs, the federal government has a responsibility to improve this state of affairs. Its current role is limited; community colleges receive less than 30 percent the level of federal government support provided to four-year colleges.

A forthcoming paper from the Brookings Institution proposes a major shift in this relationship. It calls for four key federal reforms: a new focus on national goals for the two-year sector guided by a first-ever accountability system; expanded federal funding to help community colleges meet these more ambitious goals; stimulating greater innovation in community college policies and practices to enhance educational quality; and developing student data systems that enable crucial tracking of outcomes. As recognized by ambitious initiatives such as the Lumina Foundation’s Achieving the Dream project, a “culture of evidence” focused on student achievement—when coupled with capacity-building efforts to make success possible— can have a rapid and transformative impact.

On funding, the federal government should double its current level of direct support for community colleges, from $6 billion to $12 billion, in order to account for 30 percent of their budgets. Resource needs, especially for infrastructure, technology, and faculty, are significant and pressing.

Since 1974, only 149 new community colleges have been built, and many campuses today are bursting at the seams. While community college students tend to enroll part-time, even these students require space in which to learn. In the first two years, this spending would amount to just 1.4 percent of the proposed costs of the recovery package, and would support infrastructure upgrades that truly stimulate the economy. Over the longer term, it would add modestly to federal higher education expenditures, but would ensure that our nation realizes an economic payoff from increasing enrollments.

The federal government should not simply expand funding, but use these new resources explicitly to promote greater success for community college students. Colleges receiving enhanced funds would be required to track and report student results, such as completion of a minimum number of credits, earning a degree, and landing a good-paying job. Over time, a majority of federal dollars would be awarded based not on enrollment, but on colleges’ performance on these critical measures.

Our community college system, long on the sidelines in funding and policy debates, now needs a seat at the table. Ensuring that American workers are trained to compete in the global marketplace, to earn a place in the middle class, and to fulfill their responsibilities as citizens requires expanding and improving their experience with postsecondary education. By better supporting the affordable and accessible higher educational institutions found within all of our communities, and asking more of them in exchange, we can put our nation and its families back on the path to economic prosperity.

Authors

Alan Berube
Sara Goldrick-Rab

Why Washington Needs a Community College

Alice M. Rivlin and Walter Smith — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 12:00:00 -0400

Our nation's capital needs a resource that every large city except Washington has: a community college. Community colleges provide training for "middle skill" jobs -- those that require less than a four-year degree but more than a high school diploma. They launch students into four-year programs, work closely with regional employers to help them prepare and retain skilled and qualified workers, and offer accessible, affordable courses for adults who need to enhance their job skills. Community colleges thrive in the Washington suburbs -- Northern Virginia Community College, Montgomery College and Prince George's Community College are vibrant institutions -- but they have no counterpart in the District.

Tens of thousands of jobs were added to the D.C. economy over the past decade. Construction cranes and bustling new commercial and residential centers all speak to the renaissance of Washington. But for too many D.C. residents, this newly pulsating capital city has brought little opportunity. Less than a third of District jobs are held by District residents. One in three working families in the District is poor. And when many new jobs demand specialized training, more than 100,000 District residents have no post-secondary education at all. Indeed, more than 30 percent of adults in the District function at the lowest levels of literacy.

Mayor Adrian M. Fenty's focus on improving the District's public schools is a crucial response to these sobering facts, but a community college is equally important. Washington's only public institution of higher education, the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), offers some two-year degrees and occupational certificate programs mixed in with its four-year curriculum. But UDC has never focused on the community college mission or created a full set of community college courses, lest doing so jeopardize its aspirations to become a respected four-year and graduate institution. Other states recognize that community colleges and universities fulfill different functions and do not ask the same educational leaders to perform both. UDC would be a stronger, more focused university if it were not saddled with the muddled mission of doubling as a community college.

Local leaders from business, government and academia gathered recently to consider options for creating a D.C. community college. Three options laid out in a Brookings Institution paper included creating a separate community college within UDC, establishing a free-standing community college (perhaps incubated by an existing institution) and creating a venue in the city where a variety of institutions would offer community college courses. The group was enthusiastic about developing a community college proposal that could be implemented. Members of the local foundation community generously pledged to help fund a feasibility study to examine the costs and benefits of growing a community college in the nation's capital. The momentum for such an institution is building.

Creating a community college in the District will be neither simple nor inexpensive. But the tangible benefits of a pathway to better jobs for working families and underemployed individuals are tremendous. City residents with good jobs produce more tax revenue and seek fewer social services. Higher employment levels would probably reduce crime and substance abuse. Furthermore, community college training for parents could improve the performance of many D.C. public school students.

The District has already paid a steep price for failing to establish a community college, including undermining UDC's focus on the mission of producing top-quality baccalaureate and graduate school programs. Joining the ranks of every other major city that provides community college opportunities would demonstrate true commitment to building a nation's capital we can all be proud of.

Authors

Alice M. Rivlin
Walter Smith

Publication: The Washington Post

Envisioning Opportunity: Three Options for a Community College in Washington, D.C.

Brooke DeRenzis, Alice M. Rivlin and Martha Ross — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 12:00:00 -0400

In most cities around the country, community colleges play a critical role in providing training for “middle skill” jobs, those that require less than a four-year degree but more than a high school diploma; helping students transfer to four-year baccalaureate programs; and serving adults who want to upgrade their skills. Community colleges are accessible to residents through open admissions and affordable tuition rates. They serve a diverse student body from all social and economic backgrounds with flexible schedules and offerings. Community colleges offer a wide array of academic and occupationally-focused certificate and associate programs tied to the regional labor market. Associate degree programs have clear articulation agreements with four-year degree programs to facilitate transfers. Community colleges also provide strong developmental courses for students without the reading, writing, or math skills required for college-level coursework, as well as support and guidance services to help students succeed. They often forge strong links with public high schools and adult literacy programs. Additionally, community colleges serve regional employers by working closely with them to develop curricula and programs to prepare a pool of skilled and qualified workers.

The District needs a community college to carry out these types of functions. While the regional labor market is generally a high-skilled one, not all occupations in the city and surrounding suburbs require a four-year degree or more. Nearly a third of the jobs in the city itself are accessible to workers with some postsecondary training or a two-year degree. Yet too often, District residents do not meet this threshold. Census estimates for 2005 suggest that more than 111,000 working-age adults in the city have no post-secondary education. D.C. residents with a high school degree or less have higher poverty and unemployment rates than those with some postsecondary education and college degrees.

Despite this need, the District of Columbia does not have a fully fledged community college. In fact, of the 50 largest American cities, Washington is the only city without one. Instead, the city’s only public institution of higher education, the University of the District of Columbia (UDC), struggles with the dual missions of a community college and a state university, straining its resources and hampering its effectiveness.

This brief lays out three options for creating a community college in the District: (1) Create a community college within UDC; (2) create a freestanding community college from an incubator institution; or (3) create a community college network that strengthens and ties together sub-baccalaureate offerings at UDC and other institutions in the city and suburbs. None of these options are easy or cheap, and all would require substantial commitment from city leaders and major new investments in higher education. If the city is not willing to make a large and long-term investment, it cannot expect much in return. While each option has benefits and limitations, we believe that the most viable, effective, and sustainable option is the creation of a freestanding community college that starts within an incubator institution.

None of the options call for eliminating UDC’s state university functions in favor of a community college mission. However, the creation of a strong community college would have major implications for UDC since it currently carries out all of the city’s public higher education functions. If the city chooses to move forward with one of the above options, the community college planning process should take place within a broader, inclusive dialogue about the city’s public higher education needs and priorities.

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