Dr Holsworth,
I agree with your article and believe that only through the utilization of our community college system can we achieve the goals advocated by Bob McDonnell and the Business Higher Education Council.
For example, the Commonwealth could increase the ratio of state dollars allocated to Virginia community colleges instead of the four year universities which continue to dominate funding priorities during each legislative session.
By building on the current guaranteed admission programs which are currently voluntarily utilized by Virginia institutions, we could develop a two year degree or certificate which each four year institution must accept as transfer credits to the majority of majors at our State Universities.
I also believe we should explore permitting community colleges to award bachelor’s degrees in a wide variety of areas where we can assure quality is not sacrificed.
Finally, we should also explore further expanding distance learning opportunities to permit students to attend a local community college while receiving advanced bachelor’s degrees in all our four year institutions.
Since community college tuition is approximately 20% to 25% of the tuition of our four year public institutions on average and the community college student can live at home, the affordability issue can only be solved long term ,in my opinion, by increasing the size, purview, availability of Virginia community colleges.
This will mean a large investment and cooperation from our four year institutions who heretofore have occasionally engaged in a turf war over funding and coordination with the community college system. We have made some progress, but much is left to be done to achieve the laudable goals espoused by Heywood Fralin.
I believe that 17 states currently permit permit community colleges to award baccalaureate degrees. If you couple that idea with using the Virginia Community College System for job specific training and technical degrees utilizing online learning or distance learning in a local setting, you begin to get to a system which is both affordable for the student of modest means and easily reaches the goal of awarding substantially more baccalaureate degrees in Virginia over the next ten years.
Some or all of these goals have been and most probably will be a part of policy initiatives to be explored for final endorsement through the House Republican Policy Committee which I chair.
Currently, SCHEV and the Community College System, as a part of language I proposed in the current budget, is exploring a one to two year general education certificate program to be administered through our Community College System which would be guaranteed to be accepted as credits as opposed to guaranteed admission for a wide variety of degrees at our public four year institutions.
This public policy proposal would permit the child or adult who is not sure what they want to become when first entering their local community college to gain valuable transferable credits while exploring their potential career options in survey classes before transferring to complete the necessary baccalaureate or graduate degree at a Virginia four year institution.
In my judgment, over the long haul, we must shift the emphasis of our four year public institutions to graduate degrees and completing the final two years of baccalaureate degrees while maintaining an undergraduate curriculum which will increasingly not involve students who for accessibility and financial reasons will spend a significant portion of their undergraduate academic life at one of our 23 local Virginia community colleges.
Since this type of system should relieve overcrowding at our current four year institutions by reducing freshman and sophomore class sizes and theoretically should also increase in-state enrollment because approximately 99% of Virginia community college transfer students are Virginia residents, our future space needs for Virginia students could reasonably be met more easily.
Finally, since the investment in a future system centered on the foregoing would necessarily cost a great deal less for the student and correspondingly need less public dollars because of the lower cost per student and the reduced cost in building new structures on generally larger and more geographically dispersed community college campuses , this system could be more easily funded.
Competition for scarce resources in the Legislature will not cease just because we say that higher education is an important priority.
Thank you for listening to my public policy ideas. Your listening gives my colleagues a respite for at least a couple of days.
Delegate Clay Athey is Chair of the House Republican Policy Committee
Delegate Athey makes some great points. We need to explore this kind of reform of the higher education system. We have created an academic albatross in this country with the concept that everyone has to attend a 4 year college to be successful. This presumption combined with soaring costs and shameful waste has created a boondoggle nearly on par with medicare/medicaid.