According to the National student Clearinghouse, fall community college enrollment presents a mixed picture. On one hand, enrollment among full-time students has increased marginally. Part-time enrollment has declined nearly 1%. For those who are tasked with figuring out how to increase community college enrollment, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System have a few ideas of what’s going wrong.
Using 2021 data, the research shows that education level is generally correlated with educational attainment. The Fed reports that fewer than half of workers without a high school diploma considered themselves “financially ok.” Between 2013 and 2021, this sentiment changed little, rising a scant 2%.
In the same data set, 70% of workers who earned a high school diploma considered themselves to be “financially ok.” Between 2013 and 2021, this sentiment rose by 15% among this group. Sixty-two percent of workers with an associate degree considered themselves “financially ok” in 2013. By 2021, this number had risen to 74%.
Here’s where the problem lies. When it comes to being “financially ok,” there’s not a big difference between those who graduated from high school and those who graduated with a community college degree. In comparison, 91% of people who earned at least a bachelor’s degree identified themselves as being “financially ok.”
Under these circumstances, there is really no reason to spend the time and money to earn an associate degree. The incremental difference in economic security is simply not worth the effort required to earn one. If increasing enrollment is a priority, then this assessment of the value of a community college degree has to change.
A community college degree has to have a better payoff
From the same data set, it appears that parenthood isn’t kind to financial stability. That’s not surprising. Having children under the age of 18 in a household is one of the best predictors of poverty. Children are expensive, so if parents are going to attempt to increase their household incomes via education, they need specific supports (like high-quality, low-cost, highly available childcare), and the economic outcomes have to be worthwhile.
So, how do you increase the value of a community college degree? Community colleges have unfortunately thrown all in on meeting the needs of the area’s existing employers. The “customer” in this circumstance is the student, and while the employer benefits from a well-educated employee, the employer is the third-party beneficiary in this equation. Tailoring academic programs to prefer and prioritize the needs of the third-party beneficiary (literally at the expense of the student no less) is absurd. Unless the employer is paying to educate the students in the program, the community college should focus on meeting the student’s needs, and equipping the students to compete and thrive in their chosen profession – regardless of who employs them.
Until community colleges adopt a “students first” approach to their degree programs, they will continue to lose enrollment while would-be students exercise the other options available to them.
Photo Credit: Roy, via Flickr
