Comments on Quick Takes: Boston Mayor Wants to Overhaul Community Colleges, Tornado Hits Embry-Riddle, Duke President Calls for DA to Give Up Case, Stafford Dies, $355K Theft Alleged at Bridgewater State, Med Dean Defends Pepsi Board Work

• Community College graduation rates
• Posted by Alan Contreras at Oregon Office of Degree Authorization on December 27, 2006 at 11:35am EST

• Boston mayor Menino's expectation that community colleges will have graduation rates similar to public four-year colleges (somewhere in the 50-60 percent range) demonstrates a very common misunderstanding of community colleges. If he compares his colleges' 15% rate to other CCs, it will be similar. That is because people go to community colleges mainly to learn skills, not to get degrees, and even those who come for degrees tend to transfer to four-year colleges first.

  One reason why community college data tend to be skewed is that in order to get federal financial aid, a student must be seeking a degree or certificate. Thus a lot of students mark their forms that way when in fact they are not degree-seeking. No checkmark, no money. It is not a hard decision. This creates a very large false denominator of students who are supposedly degree-seeking, but who in fact are not, which also creates a falsely low graduation rate for people who had no intention of graduating.

  The question of whether community colleges are in fact serving the needs of the local economy is one worth asking, assuming that you accept the economic utility model of why we have education. However, what usually happens is that when the economy is good, CC students leave and get jobs. When those jobs go away, they go back to school for more training. This revolving door is the way CCs have worked for decades now.

  The laws of economics suggest that a CC student who is offered a good job is going to take it rather than complete a credential, and the fact that businesses hire people without credentials suggest that skills, not credentials, are what matters to employers in many industries.

• Errors and Omissions
• Posted by Glen McGhee at FHEAP on December 28, 2006 at 10:20am EST

• “People go to community colleges mainly to learn skills, not to get degrees, and even those who come for degrees tend to transfer to four-year colleges first …”

  This is very wrong, for a number of reasons, and must have been written by someone who has never interacted much with CC students. CC students, particularly the older, non-traditional students, are absolutely intent on obtaining a credential – a degree. There is no “mistake” about what they are attending classes for – in order to obtain a credential, which will in turn make them eligible for transfer to a 4-yr college. Secondly, some states, such as Florida, rely heavily upon the 2+2 system. In fact, this was one reason behind the invention of the “junior college” to begin with – a way of freeing up teaching for only upper-level classes and research at the university level. I know of no data that contradicts any of this.

  During my years with community college students, the culture of aspiration seemed to dominate. That is, the credentials they were seeking, that students reported, often outstripped what they were capable of achieving. There is a significant disconnect between what they present to themselves as their achievement goal, and the actual obstacles that prevent their success. If is almost as if the prevailing culture of entitlement has undermined their ability to formulate an accurate and objective description of their skills and resources for completing college level work. The tremendous lack of student persistence is what gives us these kinds of disheartening lack of completion rates. Part of this is due to student’s lack of realism: they have no context that makes meaningful the words “college is not high school.”

  “One reason why community college data tend to be skewed is that in order to get federal financial aid, a student must be seeking a degree or certificate. Thus a lot of students mark their forms that way when in fact they are not degree-seeking. No checkmark, no money. It is not a hard decision. This creates a very large false denominator of students who are supposedly degree-seeking, but who in fact are not, which also creates a falsely low graduation rate for people who had no intention of graduating.”

  The writer apparently suggests that low graduation rates are the result of flawed measures of levels of aspiration. I know of no study that has ever suggested this. Still, there may be some causal connection between financial aid eligibility and my indicating “degree-seeking” status, with the former driving the latter. But this is irrelevant because for students applying for aid, there is no inconsistency between the two. When asked what they are in class for, no one ever says that they are there to learn a skill. They always say that they are there to earn an “A” and a degree.
  “The question of whether community colleges are in fact serving the needs of the local economy is one worth asking, assuming that you accept the economic utility model of why we have education. However, what usually happens is that when the economy is good, CC students leave and get jobs. When those jobs go away, they go back to school for more training. This revolving door is the way CCs have worked for decades now.”

  Yes, I agree that CCs serve as economic shock-absorbers; a kind of welfare system because of how they keep students out of the labor market. But the “economic utility model of why we have education” is wrong for other reasons: the vast majority of job skills are learned, as they say, “on the job,” and not in the classroom. Prof. Ivar Berg first said it: “Colleges are aging vats,” that students are sorted into and pickled in over time. Those sufficiently pickled (read: compliant) then go on to fill positions in the military-educational-industrial complex. This, of course, is consistent with much of the stratification theory applied to the sociology of education, and resultant problems with credential inflation. The mere existence of credential inflation shows how what goes on in the “aging vats” we call schools, is, for the most part, irrelevant to what occurs afterwards. Basic literacy and numerical skills are gained much earlier in the process.

  “The laws of economics suggest that a CC student who is offered a good job is going to take it rather than complete a credential, and the fact that businesses hire people without credentials suggest that skills, not credentials, are what matters to employers in many industries.”

  Well, no, businesses do NOT “hire people without credentials.” For example, anyone lacking a high school diploma that is looking for a job has a lot of explaining to do to any prospective employer. In fact, a college degree has now become the threshold credential for entry into the job market, and even that is gradually losing its value against inflation. I would even say that NO corner of the labor market has escaped the reach of the credential markets themselves. Even the US Army (for the most part) requires a credential, the HS diploma. The US Army has found, for example, that those lacking this credential present more discipline problems than those with it. This, of course, is consistent with the “job signaling” function of credential markets in general: the credential indicates “higher ability” to the would-be employer.

• Community College Student Data
• Posted by Floyd Hammack on December 28, 2006 at 2:55pm EST

• Two important sources for the issues raised in these posts: James E. Rosenbaum, Beyond College For All (Russell Sage Foundation, 2001) and the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. Its web site has many documents relevant to this discussion (http://ccrc.tc.columbia.edu/)