For many college students, the cost of a four-year university degree and living away from home may place an impossible barrier in front of them. Now, there's a way around that problem.
More than one-third of the recent grads of Virginia's four-year public colleges began in community colleges, and the rate in Maryland is even higher. A Post article says that an accord has been reached between universities and community colleges that guarantees admission to applicants who complete certain courses with good grades. The illustration given is that of a woman who graduated from a community college and went on to UVA, one of the two or three top public schools in the nation.
There are a lot of pluses for those universities. The university graduation rate for community college students is identical to that of others. Furthermore, they add to student diversity. At UVA transfer students were three times as likely as freshmen to come from low-income homes.
FYI: Many Midwesterners, perhaps because of the Big 10 schools, are unaware of the clout of the three top public schools. As a former college prof, consulting to upper-middle class execs who wanted info on schools for their kids, I was often asked about schools. In terms of undergrad student quality, three public schools always--and I really mean "always"--led the pack: University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), University of California (Berkeley), and the University of Virginia (Charlottesville). In Virginia, top community college students can transfer to UVA after their two years of "university prep." Not too shabby.
The Post article said that over the past five years, 23 community colleges in Virgina have reached accords with all four-year colleges and universities for transfer admissions. In recent years, two year schools tended to be more oriented to vo-tech classes than university prep, but that's changing. Maryland higher-ed leaders are rolling out new two-year degrees, accepted at every public four-year college. An online database gives community college students the transfer value of every course.
The article also indicated that several other states are moving to an associate degree that guarantees admission to the public university. California, for example, is considering a program for its State University system.
Historically, this is a return to the roots of the community college system. My wife graduated from a "junior college" where she took the first two years of liberal arts, then went on to a top college for her bachelor's. At that time, the so-called "junior college" offered nothing in vo-tech courses.
The good news is that 26 states now clearly define what students need to transfer from the community college to the public university. And, the Obama administration is putting a lot of money into community college programs. As the article notes, taxpayers like the idea too. Two-year colleges receive a small fraction of the money per-student in contrast to research universities which also provide dorms, etc.