From Inside Higher Ed this week, the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program released a report chock-full of recommendations for the federal government to bolster its commitment to the country’s community colleges and help transform them into “engines of opportunity and prosperity.”  

The new administration and Congress should transform our community colleges into engines of opportunity and prosperity by targeting new investments to those colleges that succeed in helping their students succeed. To that end, the federal government should:  

􀂃 Establish national postsecondary goals and create a performance measurement system to support the effective use of federal resources

􀂃 Double its current level of support in order to account for more than 10 percent of community colleges’ budgets, ultimately awarding three quarters of these funds based on colleges’ performance in meeting key goals around student credit, credential, and degree completion

􀂃 Stimulate instructional innovations and practices to increase the quality of community college education, by devoting half of the administration’s proposed $2.5 billion state-federal partnership fund to improve and evaluate practices enhancing sub-baccalaureate education

􀂃 Support the improvement of student data systems necessary to measure and track college student outcomes, guide funding, improve accountability, and promote continuous improvement in educational quality

Recently here at the Maricopa Community Colleges we have seen a strong increase in student enrollments, partly in association with the state of the economy and partly driven by significantly enhanced four-year school tuition rates driving students to seek more cost effective approaches. 

Michael Lesiecki