Recession creates new role for community colleges

September 5, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON

On this Labor Day weekend, the unemployment rate is anchored near 10 percent, and experts of all stripes are trying to figure out how to create more jobs. There’s consensus that community colleges help retrain workers for 21st- century tasks and provide students the skills that employers increasingly seek, but funding for these vital institutions remains inadequate.

Higher-education policy in the nation’s capital focuses most on boosting four-year college graduation rates. However, not all jobs require a college degree, and community colleges increasingly have to choose between preparing students for the modern work force or teaching standard classroom courses toward four-year college education.

Evidence of these conflicting priorities abounds at Anne Arundel Community College, near Maryland’s capital, Annapolis. Enrollment there, already more than 55,000, is growing at an annual clip of 5 percent or more, as more high school grads attend for two years in pursuit of an eventual four-year college degree.

Joining them are students eagerly seeking practical job-training skills.

Lynetta Flack, 58, takes a professional baking class. After retiring from a long career in the Army, she obtained a culinary degree and became a chef, but now she’s back for certification as a baker to make herself more marketable.

Richard Fowler, 30, is taking night classes. When the economy soured, he lost his job as a radar-integration and test engineer at defense contractor Northrop Grumman. Now he seeks certification to land a job as a computer-network engineer.

“I’ve been to several job fairs, probably 10 in the last month or two. They don’t really say, ‘Hey, you don’t have the certification so I can’t hire you.’ They kind of allude to that,” he said.

Community colleges traditionally provided vocational training and prepared students for careers in food service or health care. Today, however, they’re just as likely to provide training for everything from computer-aided architectural design to cyber- security and computer programming. Employers increasingly count on these colleges to certify work skills.

“In the past we heard employers much more interested in soft skills, teaching employees things like customer service or supervision,” said Laura Weidner, the dean of work-force development at Anne Arundel. “Now, they want to know, ‘Where’s the certification in supervision or management?’”

Enrollment in two-year study programs at community colleges nationwide was up 17 percent last year, said George Boggs, president of the American Association of Community Colleges. Over five years, enrollment is up 30 percent.

However, as enrollment has risen, states haven’t provided enough money to keep pace. In fact, state funding of community colleges is on the downswing. In 1980, 16 states footed the bill for 60 percent or more of their community college budgets. Last year, none did.

President Barack Obama’s American Graduation Initiative, launched in July 2009, seeks to boost community-college graduation by 5 million students by 2020. One trend may help that goal be reached: Many states have enrollment caps for four-year public universities. That’s led to a surge in students’ trying to get two years at community colleges before transferring to a four-year school. It’s also muddied the mission of community colleges.

Martha Smith, the president of Anne Arundel Community College, knows this struggle for funds all too well.

“There’s been recognition, at the national level, of the importance of community colleges, even across administrations,” Smith said. She noted that President George W. Bush launched his community-based job-training grants at her college in 2006. “There has been awareness and some dollars following that awareness of the need.”

“Some dollars” is the telltale term.

Dedicated state and federal funding remains inadequate; much of the funding comes from one-time-only federal, state and private grants. Chasing grants ties up manpower, as schools constantly seek their renewal.

Obama’s American Graduation Initiative — announced at Macomb Community College in Michigan — envisioned $12 billion in new spending over a decade. Last year, only 5 percent of U.S. community-college revenues came from the federal government, according to the American Association of Community Colleges.

So far, however, politics has trumped policy when it comes to boosting federal funds for community colleges.