Let’s get serious about college readiness

With 2015 only weeks old, the starting gun has already sounded in the 2016 race for the presidency. But it wasn’t fired by potential Republican aspirants heading to Iowa or New Hampshire, nor by Hillary Clinton feeding speculation about her forthcoming announcement, but by the current lame-duck president in his State of the Union address. By making unserious but politically pleasing proposals, he made clear that his focus is already on keeping the White House in Democratic hands—not on governing while he still has the chance.

The president’s initiatives came across not at all like invitations to Congress to work with him on something real and very much like a list of artfully crafted and politically focused demands that will produce further gridlock in the near term. They just might also, he fervently hopes, put Republicans in a bind and harm their chances in 2016. The most egregious example of this is his plan for “free” community college. The proposal had barely been floated before it was quickly shot down by all except those who have never seen an expensive federal entitlement program they didn’t like. And this one is surely expensive—$60 billion over ten years. Yet the taxpayer burden is far from the only problem with this plan.

{mosads}First, the (relatively low) price of tuition at community colleges makes affordability not appear to be near the problem it is at most four-year institutions. According to one study, 71 percent of students already attend community college at little to no cost to them thanks to Pell grants and other federal, state, and institutional subsidies. Those who are too wealthy to qualify for Pell Grants can generally afford to pay their own way.

At any rate, the cost to students is far from the biggest reason we don’t have more community college graduates. It’s students’ weak preparation. In his State of the Union remarks discussing the program, Obama called for making “two years of college…as free and universal in America as high school is today.” While we, of course, have many outstanding high schools in this country, too many students leave even good schools woefully unprepared for success in college and later life (some community colleges do not even require a diploma). In 2013, the National Assessment of Educational Progress found that only 38 percent of twelfth graders were proficient in reading and 26 percent were proficient in mathematics.

What the president is really proposing, in effect, is extending high school for two more years. According to federal data, 68 percent of students entering public two-year colleges need first to take “remedial” or “developmental” (read: high-school-level) courses. A U.S. Department of Education report found that two-thirds of those who begin at a public community college had not completed any degree or certificate program six years later. Of those who are referred to remedial courses, only 28 percent end up earning a credential. That’s mostly not because of a lack of money, but because of a lack of readiness. Students who are reading and doing math at a middle school level are simply not going to thrive in college.

Obama is correct that our nation would benefit if more people sought—and obtained—bona fide credentials from community colleges and other forms of post-secondary education, but it’s not the thought that counts. Students don’t benefit from programs they don’t complete, and taxpayers don’t benefit from good intentions. Even if dumping tens of billions of dollars into community college would get many more students to enroll (and it’s not certain that it would), we still would not see many more graduates without first addressing serious issues facing our K–12 schools. 

That means making sure that all K–12 students are on a trajectory to be ready for college or a career by the time they graduate. That, in turn, means raising standards, providing access to high-quality and demanding options for parents, and boosting teacher effectiveness (technology will help, but it isn’t the whole story by any means).

In higher education, our focus should be on simplifying financial aid programs and processes, making what students learn more relevant to the skills they will need in the workforce, and eliminating institutional frills, bureaucracies, and any elements of the current financial aid structure that (even unintentionally) may drive up cost. Perhaps President Obama should talk to members of Congress (from both parties) about all of this; they might just have some good ideas. But that only makes sense if he’s serious about getting something done.

Brickman is national policy director of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.