Economix Blog: The Changing Face of Community Colleges

Students at community colleges increasingly come from low-income families, as I mention in an article for Thursday’s newspaper about a new report. The trends, in their simplest terms:

Source: Anthony P. Carnevale and Jeff Strohl, “How Increasing College Access Is Increasing Inequality, and What to Do About It,” in “Rewarding Strivers: Helping Low-Income Students Succeed in College,” ed. Richard D. Kahlenberg (New York: Century Foundation Press, 2010), 136–37, Figures 3.6 and 3.7.

The ethnic breakdown has also changed, as the report, which is being published by The Century Foundation, explains:

Between 1994 and 2006, the white share of the community college population plummeted from 73 percent to 58 percent, while black and Hispanic representation grew from 21 percent to 33 percent, in part reflecting growing diversity in the population as a whole. By contrast, the change was much less dramatic at the most selective four-year colleges during this time period, when the white share dipped just three percentage points (from 78 percent to 75 percent) and the black and Hispanic shares barely moved (from 11 percent to 12 percent).

Community colleges get much less media attention than four-year colleges — and I’ll plead guilty to that charge, too — but they will play an enormous role in shaping the economy. They enroll more than 40 percent of college students nationwide. They also tend to have distressingly low graduation rates, which means they represent a pool of potential college graduates.

As we have written before, the unemployment rate for college graduates is below 4 percent. For everyone else, it is above 7.5 percent.

The full report on community colleges, from the Century Foundation, is now online.

Article source: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/23/the-changing-face-of-community-colleges/?partner=rss&emc=rss