Community Colleges: The potential for socio-economic gain of their students from the 1960s to the present.

The community college plays a significant role in the quest for American education to function as societies great equalizer, and resource to promote American meritocratic values. It has provided open access to higher education at a fraction of the cost of four year institutions. This has resulted in student populations that are disproportionally low-income and minority students when compared to the student populations at four year institutions ¹ . Due to the high percentage of disadvantage students attending community college, analyzing the returns of community college education is essential to understanding the reality of upward economic mobility for disadvantage populations. This asks the question: how have community colleges contributed to the socio-economic mobility of their students when examined from the 1960s to the present? There is economic gain for an associate’s degree holder, this gain has grown since the 1960s. Unfortunately, it is not substantially more than the value of completing high school, and does not compare to the economic advantages of obtaining a baccalaureate degree. Additionally, current retention rates at community colleges are extremely low. The fluctuating economic benefits of an associate’s degree are due to the changing functions of community colleges, the demographic changes in the student populations, and the educational needs of the country.

Community colleges were created out of the common school movement in the early twentieth century as a response to the increase in amount of high school graduates and the need for more accessible higher education. Over the last century the demographics of their student populations have changed drastically. Beach explains, “the students who enrolled in community colleges in the first half of the twentieth century were middle-class high school graduates who wanted to earn their bachelor’s degree and enter a white collar profession” ² . He is suggesting that community college was focused on academics that would facilitate transfer to four year institutions and that the degrees awarded at community colleges were not constructed to be the only degree obtained by the students. Beach proposes the shift in student demographics suggesting, “by the 1970s the community colleges became the point of entry for new student populations who were older and more economically disadvantaged” ³ .This demographic shift had profound effect on the economic value of the degree earned at community colleges.

The 1970s brought many changes to community colleges. An increase in the availability of federal financial aid, and the growing number of institutions allowed community colleges to actively recruit low-income minority populations and older non-traditional students. This demographic shift, contributed to less enrollment in liberal arts transfer courses and a high need for remedial courses. Brint and Karabel add to the change, by explaining that community colleges began to make stronger ties to business as a response to the countries fiscal crisis of the mid-1070s ⁴ . Increased enrollment of disadvantaged populations, the need for remedial classes, and the fiscal crisis of the 1970s contributed to the increase of vocational programs at community colleges. The increase in vocational programs at a time when baccalaureate credentials were needed to enter the professional managerial class affected the socioeconomic gains provided by community college completion.

Examining Census data of the 1970s suggests that vocational education at community college stagnated growing financial gains for community college completion. In 1970 the graph shows that the median income of person holding an associates degree began to rise slightly above the income of a person who had only obtained a high school degree. By the end of the 1970s the graph shows that there is little difference in the median incomes between persons with high school completion and associates degree. This clarifies that in the 1970s there was little socio-economic mobility for community college students a trend that the graph indicates continued through the 1980s ⁵

In the 1990s Kevin Dougherty examined community colleges and concluded that they were contradictory institutions in his book, The Contradictory College. Dougherty believed that the institutions “were just ineffective, non-encouraging, anti-academic, low performing, and overly vocationalized” ⁶ . Although this critique suggests that community colleges are not deliberate institutions of social class reproduction, it brings up interesting questions about the undetermined purpose of community college and how their many purposes affect the socio-economic mobility of their students. Can a public institution of higher education be a jack of all trades and a master at none?  The recent census data suggests that there is economic advantage to holding an associate’s degree but certainly not as high as the economic advantage of obtaining a baccalaureate degree (see chart above). Additionally, what good are these economic advantages if they apply to so few students? Only 30% of the students enrolled in community college will complete their degree in 150% of the time required to finish an associates degree? ⁷ . Lastly, community colleges currently enroll seven million students and half of all undergraduate students in the country. The efficacy of these institutions needs to be examined to support the populations they serve.