The Burden On Our Community Colleges

We're on our way to Patrick Henry Community College in Martinsville today, and I stumbled across an interesting article on community colleges on the ride there. Perfect timing for some thought-provoking questions.

Of the Obama Administration's goal of 8 million post-secondary graduates by 2020, 5 million of those are expected to come from the country's community colleges. And community colleges, compared to other four year institutions, are taking in a growing share of students from low-income communities.

Is this too much to ask of our community colleges in a time of declining state support for higher education? A new report from the Century Foundation takes a comprehensive view of the system as it is and the challenges ahead. The report comes to a difficult conclusion (of course with some solutions and proposals in there as well):

Today, community colleges are in great danger of becoming indelibly separate and unequal institutions in the higher education landscape.

More on the report here: http://nyti.ms/14Sw0Hm