Community Colleges at Capacity

For community colleges, turning away qualified students isn’t just something they don’t want to do, it goes against their entire philosophy.
But in the hallways and in sessions at the annual meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges, which convened over the weekend in Boston, leaders of two-year institutions talked about their frustrations with capacity issues. As states have cut funds or failed to keep up with enrollment growth, de facto enrollment limits have been set — and students are being turned away.
Likewise, in some states experiencing population growth or where states have decided to encourage more students to enroll in higher education, educators fear that state legislatures aren’t always following through with money to pay for that growth.
Tensions over these issues were evident at a session Sunday morning in which officials from Texas, Louisiana and California discussed capacity and growth issues in their states. Eduardo Marti, president of Queensborough Community College and moderator of the session, said the issue boils down to “what are we going to do with students coming to us and the resources are not here.” He added that this gap threatens “the whole concept of the community college experience.”
Glenda Barron, assistant commissioner of higher education in Texas, who is responsible for two-year colleges in that state, pointed both to successes and to serious challenges there. Texas is in the middle of a campaign to significantly increase college-going rates generally, and for members of various minority groups in particular. As part of that campaign — which aims eventually to add 500,000 students to higher education — Texas has seen the number of community college students increase by 88,000 in the last five years.

Full Story: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2005/04/11/aacc