{"id":46150,"date":"2018-11-29T10:52:46","date_gmt":"2018-11-29T18:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/world.edu\/?p=46150"},"modified":"2018-11-29T10:52:46","modified_gmt":"2018-11-29T18:52:46","slug":"community-college-as-road-to-nowhere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/world.edu\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\/","title":{"rendered":"Community College as road to nowhere"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-46151\" src=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Funding-community-colleges.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"680\" height=\"340\" srcset=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Funding-community-colleges.jpg 680w, https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Funding-community-colleges-250x125.jpg 250w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 680px) 100vw, 680px\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cCome to the community college! We\u2019re cheap!\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8211;typical promotion for a CC<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Unlike universities, community colleges can spring up very quickly. You don\u2019t need departments, you barely even need faculty. All you need are some administrators to hire cheap adjuncts, cut-and-paste the curriculum used at a nearby legitimate school\u2026and you\u2019re basically set.<\/p>\n<p>This simple set up does allow for cost-cutting, and students are quite justified in expecting, and getting, lower prices for their courses and degrees. Of course, the savings here are illusory: the coursework often doesn\u2019t transfer (some 80% of students are victimized like this), and even whole degrees from a community college can be of no value.<\/p>\n<p>How can there be a savings when everything you get there is worthless? I\u2019ve made this observation before, even documented it enough, but a recent article has a few things to add:<\/p>\n<p><em><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.insidehighered.com\/views\/2018\/10\/19\/community-colleges-rely-too-much-low-value-associate-degrees-dont-lead-transfer\">A Road to Nowhere<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Many community colleges rely too much on associate degrees that have little labor market value and too rarely lead to a four-year credential, Ryan Craig argues.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t take long to see the author here has thought about the kind of money being wasted on community colleges:<\/p>\n<p><em>\u2026the next time there\u2019s a public event to celebrate the opening or expansion of a community college, it might make sense to bring both: cut the giant check with the giant scissors to signify the money being wasted.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I hope someday someone sits down and does the math on these things, as the money spent is extraordinary. I don\u2019t know for sure, but it\u2019s quite possible, if, in lieu of a CC, the community simply erected a mosquito breeding ground and paid the associated health costs of mosquito-borne diseases, that it would come out better off than the sheer waste of a community college.<\/p>\n<p><em>What community colleges represent is clear. They were the first higher education institutions in the community at a time when four-year colleges and universities were inaccessible to all but a small segment of the population. As the first open-enrollment institutions, they revolutionized accessibility in an era before a college degree became the sine qua non of the labor market.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>A big problem of what happened to higher ed was our \u201cleadership\u201d turned into plunderers. Yes, absolutely, there was a time in the not-too-distant past where community college represented a real opportunity to move ahead in a cheaper and more convenient way than going to university.<\/p>\n<p>Our leaders plundered that reputation, and many CCs are now unhinged, with most of what goes on in the classrooms outright fraudulent, and the courses which honestly admit what they cover are <a href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/90-of-community-college-isnt-college\/\">90% high school level or lower<\/a>, and accreditation does nothing because they\u2019re in on it. Meanwhile, the leaders rake in the loot as reward for \u201cgrowth\u201d of the school.<\/p>\n<p>While CC admin say they\u2019re doing a great job, the real world knows otherwise:<\/p>\n<p><em>Employability is a huge problem for associate degrees. The more problematic associate programs are for students who don\u2019t plan to end there; over 80 percent of students who enroll in associate programs at community college <a href=\"https:\/\/www.aspeninstitute.org\/publications\/transfer-implementation-guide\/\">intend to transfer<\/a> to four-year institutions. Of course, only 32 percent actually do within six years, and fewer than 15 percent earn a bachelor\u2019s degree in that time frame. The trouble is transfer. A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gao.gov\/assets\/690\/686530.pdf\">GAO report<\/a> from last summer revealed that students who transfer lose 43 percent of credits they\u2019ve earned, which means even more time for life to get in the way.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Goodness, such miserable percentages\u2026how can any community think of a CC as a boon when the facts say otherwise?<\/p>\n<p>Part of the problem of the useless of the CC degrees is from the core structure of the school: the faculty are irrelevant, being merely a collection of whoever admin can scrape together to serve administrative whims as cheaply as possible. How can there be a coherent degree program under such circumstances? It\u2019s simply not possible, as any faculty with any standards are quickly removed\u2026standards cut into growth.<\/p>\n<p>Another trick CC\u2019s use to make their communities think they\u2019re a benefit are dual enrollment programs, i.e., programs where the high school students get college credit by going to the CC. Sounds great, right? How\u2019s that work out?<\/p>\n<p><em>Dual enrollment has the same fundamental challenge as free community college: It may be free, but where does it get you?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Again, if the credits don\u2019t transfer, or at least transfer meaningfully, there\u2019s no benefit to teaching the high school kids with adjuncts instead of high school teachers\u2026well, beyond paying a bunch of CC admin $100,000 a year apiece to crow about how great they are.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m close to finishing up the first 50% of the brutal chemo that gives me a chance of survival\u2026I can\u2019t help but draw parallels between the futility of fighting this cancer for decades now and fighting the immense fraud of our typical community college system.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, I know, someone will chirp in with \u201cbut CC really helped me out!\u201d but much like with that one guy who actually recovers from cancer\u2026it\u2019s something of a fluke, and at some point we need to take a more realistic look at what we\u2019re doing here, to see if we yet have the will to fix things.<\/p>\n<p>Somehow, I suspect that time is not yet here.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.professorconfess.blogspot.com\/\">www.professorconfess.blogspot.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cCome to the community college! We\u2019re cheap!\u201d &#8211;typical promotion for a CC Unlike universities, community colleges can spring up very quickly. You don\u2019t need departments, you barely even need faculty. All you need are some administrators to hire cheap adjuncts, cut-and-paste the curriculum used at a nearby legitimate school\u2026and you\u2019re basically set. This simple set [&hellip;]\n&hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\/\" class=\"more\">learn more&rarr;<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":46151,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[2750],"coauthors":[11733],"class_list":["post-46150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-higher-education","tag-community-colleges"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Community College as road to nowhere - World leading higher education information and services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Community College as road to nowhere - World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u201cCome to the community college! We\u2019re cheap!\u201d &#8211;typical promotion for a CC Unlike universities, community colleges can spring up very quickly. You don\u2019t need departments, you barely even need faculty. All you need are some administrators to hire cheap adjuncts, cut-and-paste the curriculum used at a nearby legitimate school\u2026and you\u2019re basically set. This simple set [&hellip;]\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\/\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"World leading higher education information and services\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-11-29T18:52:46+00:00\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/world.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/Funding-community-colleges.jpg\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"680\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"340\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Kevin\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Kevin\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" class=\"yoast-seo-meta-tag\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Kevin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/42c1c1d5ff7ffbdf0bd50ed94c6ae6ee\"},\"headline\":\"Community College as road to nowhere\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-11-29T18:52:46+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/\"},\"wordCount\":910,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/11\\\/Funding-community-colleges.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"community colleges\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Higher Education\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/\",\"name\":\"Community College as road to nowhere - World leading higher education information and services\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/11\\\/Funding-community-colleges.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2018-11-29T18:52:46+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/42c1c1d5ff7ffbdf0bd50ed94c6ae6ee\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/11\\\/Funding-community-colleges.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2018\\\/11\\\/Funding-community-colleges.jpg\",\"width\":680,\"height\":340},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/community-college-as-road-to-nowhere\\\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Community College as road to nowhere\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/world.edu\\\/\",\"name\":\"World leading higher education information and services\",\"description\":\"Global Higher Education Jobs, University jobs, Lecturer &amp; 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