Community Colleges Online

The Community Colleges Online Programme is the working title for a National initiative by President Obama of the US to foster the development of e-learning in the Community Colleges sector. It is part of a much larger $12 billion initiative to revitalise the whole Community College sector and in particular to boost graduation rates, improve facilities and develop new technology. This in turn is part of the $100 billion stimulus package for education.

A recent report by the Brookings Institution, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal, estimated the US (federal) government provides community colleges with about $2 billion a year in direct support, about a tenth of what it spends on public-four year universities.

The broader initiative

This has three main aspects:

• Access and completion fund ($9 billion): This is designed to spur community colleges and states to launch projects designed to raise graduation rates and produce graduates who are ready for the workplace or for a transfer to a four-year university. Administration officials say such measures could include forming partnerships with major employers or bolstering counseling and remedial-education programmes.
• Renovations ($2.5 billion): Many colleges are outdated, short on class space and ill-equipped to handle IT. The funds are to be used as seed money to help raise private funding or to pay the interest on construction bonds and loans.
• Online curriculum ($500 million): This will be used to develop online curricula for community-college students.

The president said the programme is inspired in part by a Michigan programme that offers displaced auto workers tuition assistance at community colleges to seek retraining for alternative careers, such as in the health-care industry, which until recently has been expanding in the state.

Funding

The US government plans to fund the new initiative with savings that result from proposed changes in the federal student loan programme. They have proposed eliminating private lenders from the programme and making the federal government the sole lender. Such a change would save $87 billion over the next decade, although it still faces opposition from private lenders.

Of the nearly 19 million graduate and undergraduate college students, about 6.7 million, or 36%, attend two-year colleges. With an average age of 29, they tend to be older than students at four-year universities and work longer hours at jobs outside the classroom. Many need remedial classes; fewer than a third earn their associates degrees in three years or less.

The initiative is designed to produce an additional five million community college graduates by 2020.

Commentaries

1. Obama Plans Community-College Initiative, Wall Street Journal, 14 July 2009, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124753606193236373.html
2. Community colleges go to the head of the class under President Obama's plan, The Star-Ledger, 23 July 2009, http://blog.nj.com/njv_editorial_page/2009/07/community_colleges_go_to_the_h.html

Related initiatives

For a somewhat similar but much smaller programme in the UK see the Online Learning Innovation Fund.

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