Obama community college proposal may not be enough

INDIANAPOLIS — Arthur Call commutes three hours roundtrip to his anatomy class at community college because similar courses on campuses closer to his Indianapolis home are packed this semester.

"Classes around the state were just full," says Call, a full-time student who takes the rest of his classes in Indianapolis. "Thank God it's only Tuesdays. I just have to drive there once a week."

President Barack Obama wants to invest some $12 billion in community colleges with the aim of seeing an additional 5 million students graduate by 2020. This goal comes while many schools are already bursting at the seams with droves of displaced workers hit by the recession competing with traditional students seeking an education bargain.

"All community colleges are not prepared to take on those potentially large numbers of students," said Debra Bragg, a professor and director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois.

The Obama administration notes that 5 million more community college graduates doesn't necessarily mean there will be that many more students — schools could increase graduation rates to reach the goal. And the administration says money from the 10-year initiative to rebuild aging facilities and establish online classes would help schools handle the extra students.

Bragg says the schools' ability to deal with more students largely comes down to cash.

Much of the money for the nation's 1,200 community colleges comes from local and state sources. That funding has been hard to come by during the economic downturn, even as enrollment booms. In California, community colleges are struggling to cope with $840 million in budget cuts while enrollment is expected to climb.

Obama's 10-year initiative would provide a welcome infusion of cash, but some fear it would not sustain community college programs.

"They will be constrained by funding," says Bragg. "It could be potentially extremely challenging if there's not increased funding at the federal, state and local level to make that happen."

The conundrum comes at a time of intense growth for the more than century-old community college system, which already educates more than half the nation's undergraduates.

And more young Americans than ever are going to college, particularly community college. A record high of about 11.5 million Americans age 18 to 24, or nearly 40 percent, attended college in October 2008, according to a study of Census data recently released by the Pew Research Center. Almost all of the increase of 300,000 students over the previous year came at two-year schools.