December 17, 2013--Quad Learning

More than half of all high school graduates who go to college go to community colleges. Most on entrance say they want to complete two years there and then transfer to four-year colleges to complete bachelors degrees.

But for the majority their aspirations are thwarted--more than half of community college students ever complete those first two years, of those who do only a portion transfer, and fewer still ultimately gain baccalaureate degrees.

Since low-income students disproportionately begin and sadly end college life at junior colleges, this is a significant social problem for America. Equity suffers and there is the great loss of human potential.

For many decades--at least since the 1960s--community college advocates, critics, faculty, and staff have known about this problem and many have attempted to do various things to help more students reach their potential and realize their dreams.

One little-know fact involves the transfer of community-college credits to senior colleges. For too many students who manage to complete two-years and earn associate degrees only a portion of their community college credits are accepted by the colleges to which they transfer. Thus, transferring students have to amass many more than the 120 credits traditionally required to graduate with a BA or BS degree. Efforts to fix this higher education shell game through "articulation agreements" between two- and four-year colleges have only marginally improved, not solved this problem.

Also, since so relatively few community college students progress far enough to be available for advanced courses, including honors courses, their colleges simply do not offer them.

For many community college students thinking about medical school it is impossible, for example, to take any chemistry courses beyond Chem 101 and 102. For history-major aspirants nothing much is available beyond the introductory courses. Again, though this problem has been known for many years, little has been done to ameliorate the situation.

Far back in 1976 I wrote Second Best, which was about the history of community colleges, their social roles, and the structural problems low-income students had to confront when they began their college careers at two-year colleges.

Little has changed since then.

But, trumpeted recently by the New York Times, there are new kinds of efforts to, among other things, offer honors courses at community colleges to enrich their academic programs and meet the needs of students with high potential and appropriately high aspirations.

Offered by a for-profit company, Quad Learning, through what they call American Honors, advanced courses are offered at participating community colleges. Thus far only five community colleges are involved and just 230 students are enrolled. With many tens of thousands of students able and eager to benefit by taking honors courses at two-year colleges why such a small-scale program gets so much coverage in the Times is another story.

Perhaps one reason so few colleges and students are participating is cost.

Since Quad Learning is doing this to make money (no crime) and the colleges where American Honors is available share in the profits (not a crime, but highly questionable) it costs students about $2,000 a year more in tuition to be eligible to take the courses. Real money at this time in our economy and for students from low-income backgrounds.

American Honors is yet another example of privatizing higher education--shifting more and more of the costs associated with college onto individuals and their families and away from public, tax-supported providers. This is why tuition has risen much faster than inflation, college loans have proliferated, and increasing numbers of students have been diverted to lower-cost community colleges. And now, for those diverted students, if they enroll in Quad-Learning colleges, it will cost them more to get what they by the fact of their hard work and achievement deserve.