By TAMAR LEWIN
Published: May 2, 2009
The New York Times
MIAMI — When LaKisha Coleman received her associate’s degree at
Miami Dade Community College six years ago, her best bet for a
bachelor’s degree seemed to be at the more expensive Florida International University.
Joel Flores and about 40 other students at Miami Dade worked on a mock
crime scene as part of a class exercise. Some universities oppose the
expansion of community college programs.
Sharon Plotkin, a crime scene technician, with students from Miami Dade
College, one of 14 community colleges in Florida authorized to offer
bachelor’s degrees.
But nowadays, Miami Dade College
— the “Community” has been dropped — offers bachelor’s degrees in
teaching and nursing and public safety management, and will soon add
engineering technology, film production and others. Ms. Coleman
returned to Miami Dade two years ago and is about to graduate with a
degree in public safety management.
Ms. Coleman now recommends
the college to family members. “It’s much cheaper, the teachers are
good, you can do it in the evening while you work, and everyone’s very
helpful,” she said.
As Ms. Coleman discovered, the line between community colleges and four-year universities is blurring.
Florida leads the way, with 14 community colleges authorized to offer
bachelor’s degrees, and 12 already doing so, in fields as varied as
fire safety management and veterinary technology. But nationwide,
17 states, including Nevada, Texas and Washington, have allowed
community colleges to award associate’s and bachelor’s degrees, and in
some, the community colleges have become four-year institutions. Others
states are considering community college baccalaureates.
In
most cases, the expanding community colleges argue that they are
fulfilling a need, providing four-year degrees to working people who
often lack the money or the time to travel to a university. But some of
those universities are fighting back, saying the community colleges are
involved in “mission creep” that may distract them from their
traditional mission and lead to watered-down bachelor’s degrees.
“It’s
cooking in several states, in many work-force-related fields, but
there’s a lot of debate and politics, and differing views on whether
they’re still community colleges if they give baccalaureates,” said
Beth Hagan, executive director of the Community College Baccalaureate Association, a nonprofit group that promotes the trend.
In
Michigan, community colleges are seeking to offer baccalaureates in
culinary arts, cement technology and nursing. Their efforts have
stalled, said Mike Hansen, president of the Michigan Community College Association.
“We
need legislation to do it, and the legislation’s been introduced, but
that’s as far as it’s gotten,” Mr. Hansen said. “The four-year
universities in the state are very much opposed to the idea.”
Mike Boulus, the executive director of the group that represents the
four-year universities, called the plan to expand community colleges “a
solution in search of a problem.”
“It’s clearly unnecessary,” Mr.
Boulus said. “Community colleges should stick with the important work
they do extremely well, offering two-year degrees and preparing
students for transfer to four-year schools.”
Some critics worry
that community college baccalaureates will drive up costs, take
resources from needy students and lead to low-quality degrees.
At
Miami Dade College, more than 1,000 students are enrolled in
baccalaureate programs. Their average age is 33; three-quarters are
women, and slightly more than half are Hispanic.
Miami Dade’s
president, Eduardo J. Padrón, said the baccalaureate programs were part
of his institution’s mission of serving the community.
“We
supply the area’s nurses and the teachers, and we respond quickly to
new work force needs in our community, training people for real jobs,”
Dr. Padrón said. “You won’t see us starting a B.A. in sociology. We’re
offering degrees in things the universities don’t want to do.”
He emphasized that the programs required the same kinds of general education courses as four-year universities.
Miami
Dade’s baccalaureate courses feel unlike a typical college class. In a
recent Monday evening class, Ms. Coleman and others were quick to share
experiences from outside the class. The evening’s topic was
correctional officers — their pay, job requirements, working conditions
and subculture. One student knows a guard who was fired for trafficking
in cellphones; another tells of how the guards treated visitors when
her son was in jail.
Almost all had earned their associate’s
degree, a prerequisite for the baccalaureate programs, at Miami Dade
and had taken some classes at Florida International, but had found them
expensive and unsatisfying.
Ms. Coleman, the third of 10
children, took 10 years after high school graduation to earn her
associates’ degree because she was working and had to take semesters
off to care for her younger siblings and ailing mother.
Dr. Padrón said community colleges existed to serve students like Ms. Coleman.
“We
have an open-door policy, and we serve 62 percent of Miami-Dade
district graduates who go to college,” said Dr. Padrón, referring to
the local public school system. “Eighty percent of our students work,
and 58 percent of them come from low-income families.
“Ours is
a mission of rescue. The universities that handpick their students
based on SATs and grades get three times the funding we do. We are the
underfunded overachiever.”
Dr. Padrón said he had no plans for Miami Dade to become Miami Dade State College, as it is entitled to be.
Some
community colleges that offered baccalaureates have, however, morphed
into four-year institutions, repeating a pattern in American higher
education.
“From the 1840s to the 1940s we had the sequence where
normal schools, founded to train teachers, became teachers’ colleges,
then abandoned that role to become colleges, and then the ball would
keep rolling and they would become universities,” said Christopher J.
Lucas, an education professor at the University of Arkansas.
“This has some of that feel. I get a little uneasy when I see community
colleges playing at being four-year universities. When you try to be
all things to all people, you end up not being very good for any of
them.”
Community-college baccalaureates challenge the
educational hierarchy’s boundaries between the research mission of
universities, the teaching mission of colleges and open admissions for
community colleges.
“Many people in leadership believe that’s
the right division of labor,” said Carol Geary Schneider, president of
the Association of American Colleges and Universities. “So like any
fundamental change, the blurring of the lines is uncomfortable.”
Further
complicating matters, some four-year universities offer not only
nursing and teaching degrees but also applied baccalaureates — Bachelor
of Applied Science or Bachelor of Applied Technology — in the fields
into which community colleges are expanding. “The old categories that
divided the world up between big-picture and applied-skills are out of
date and dysfunctional,” Dr. Schneider said. “So colleges and
universities of all kinds — two-year, four-year, public and private —
are feeling their way toward a synthesis.”