Getting more Americans to graduate college (or, more specifically, to successfully complete community college) will require many changes in how they operate. According to an article by Matthew Dembicki and Carisa Chappell in Community College Times:
If community colleges hope to reach a national goal of helping an additional 5 million of their students complete college by 2020, two-year institutions will have to reallocate resources rather than rely on new funding, according to foundation and government officials.
Good point. There probably isn’t good to be much new money for this effort.
There is some new money. The Department of Education, in addition to private foundations, like Lumina and Gates, will provide billions for community college reform. But, considering the enrollment increases at many community colleges, the new money is not good to be enough, by itself, to force major reform.
“It’s going to require a cultural shift,” said Dewayne Mathews of the Lumina Foundation for Education at a meeting of the American Association of Community Colleges in Washington.
No doubt it will. Still, one wonders what is going to spur that cultural shift aside from frequent discussions about the need for change at community colleges.
