blog 7

   According to the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University, only 22% of students graduate within three years, and 28% graduate within four. More telling, 80% of students say they want a bachelor's degree or higher, and yet only 20% of these students transfer to a four-year institution within five years. Even if the President's plan passed, it wouldn't help the large number of already-overcrowded community colleges that have waiting lists numbering in the thousands. Tuition is only a small part of the funding needed to educate additional students.
   The larger question the proposal misses is not how to allow students to afford college, but how to make college affordable. There's a huge distinction. The focus should be to make postsecondary education less costly and of better quality, such that the question of how to afford it becomes manageable. The President's proposal merely charges education, in the form of debt for future generations of taxpayers, rather than changes it. By supporting free community college, President Obama is merely leaving it for future generations to confront. We need a better strategy for skills training overall before we go further down the track of subsidizing students to attend community college only to emerge with little to show for it.