Boston is a city in which the economy and culture is built, in part, on the many institutes of higher education that populate the area. The ones that immediately spring to mind are the big-name universities: Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Boston College and, of course, Tufts.
While these might garner the most attention from the media in a "normal" economic time, hardships are forcing an often-overlooked branch of higher education into the spotlight. Driven by a number of factors, there has been a nationwide surge in enrollment at community colleges, in some cases even straining institutions' resources.
The increased enrollment at these institutions of higher education is a trend that has been noted by The New York Times and the Associated Press, and the 15 community colleges in Massachusetts have been no exception.
For one of them — Roxbury Community College (RCC) — the effects are clear.
"We've had a … double digit increase in enrollment this year and one of the highest of all the 15 community colleges in Massachusetts. What we are seeing is that more students are looking at community college as an option," said Stephanie Janey, vice president for Enrollment and Student Affairs at RCC. "Students and parents are looking at community college as an option to save money. [That's] for the more traditional aged student. Older students we are seeing coming back just to retool or try to finish a degree that they started and may not have completed."
Until now, Janey said, the increase has not been a problem, and the school has been able to accommodate additional students by adding courses and sections in certain subject areas. Still, the administration is noticing the changes.
"We haven't reached our enrollment capacity yet, so if we actually get to the point where we reach enrollment capacity, it might become an issue, not so much this semester. We certainly are feeling the increase; the library, for instance, talks about the number of folks that come in. They have a ticker and they count the number of students that are going into the library to receive services, and that number has gone up," Janey said.
While RCC may have been able to handle the increase, others in the area have not. In an Oct. 27 article, the New York Times reported that Bunker Hill Community College in Boston had been forced to add midnight classes to accommodate demand and that Holyoke Community College in Holyoke, Mass. had "turned its tennis courts into parking lots" in order to accommodate all the students that were driving to school.
One of the reasons for the popularity of community colleges is their "open access" admission policy, which gives anyone with the equivalent of a high school diploma the chance to receive a higher education.
"The only requirement is a high school diploma or a GED," Janey said.
This policy — honored by all of the community colleges in the Massachusetts system — allows people who might not have been accepted into four-year institutions the chance to earn a degree and pursue a career path of their choice rather than settling for the first paying job that comes along.
Many community college students enroll part-time and pay their own way, so affordability is another key component for enrollees. But with the increasing demand and a slowing economy, it is becoming more difficult for community colleges to fund their programs while keeping tuition prices reasonable.
"There are a number of things that we do [to fund programming]. As a last resort we have to raise student fees … and we have raised them for this year … because the fees are what the college keeps — the tuition money goes to the state, and the fees stay at the college," Janey said.
Even with raised fees, the cost of attending RCC is a fraction of what students at Tufts pay. RCC's student activity fee is $25, which seems cheap in comparison with Tufts' $278 student activity fee. For a student from Massachusetts attending RCC and taking 10 classes, the combined cost of tuition and all excess fees (including insurance and three lab classes) would amount to $1,945.
While there are obviously many criteria that come into play during the college search, it is little wonder that — faced with the economic downturn — students are considering the less expensive community college option as a way of pursuing a higher education. Some cut costs by enrolling in a community college and transferring to a four-year university later on, allowing them to save on two years of university tuition.
Community colleges provide an affordable way to reach goals, but they are partially reliant on the state for money, and money is in short supply in the state government these days.
"We, like many other state agencies, are affected by the cuts that happen on the state level, because tax revenues have been down in the state of Massachusetts. If tax revenues are down, then money that goes to the state-supported entities becomes a little [scarcer]," Janey said.
Other sources of funding may become available soon. President Obama weighed in on the importance of community colleges back in September at the Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York. He proposed an initiative that would allow for $12 billion to be budgeted for community colleges in an effort to produce five million more community college graduates by 2020.
"Jobs requiring at least an associate's degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience. We will not fill those jobs — or keep those jobs on our shores — without graduating more students, including millions more students from community colleges," Obama said in a speech on the American Graduation Initiative.
