Balancing Access and Success: Community college for all?

Intro by Joretta Nelson, Ph.D.

How do we balance access andsuccess? 

As our firm watches the community college policy movement in Tennessee and now appearing as the rhetoric of the Obama administration, we ask many questions about how such strategies will be both helpful and challenging to students and institutions.  The plan itself -  of offering tuition-free community college -  is a long way from an approval by Congress but the proposal does raise game-changing questions for all of us serving in higher education. This opportunity will encourage more to consider some form of college, and hopefully approach it with more consideration because receiving aid will require some advance application and processing.  At the same time, increased numbers in attendance will greatly stress the systems needed to provide the very best support towards success.  

At Credo, with our focus in higher education on private colleges and universities, we already know that such new programs will add pressure to the recruitment of first-time-full-time students to our institutions as well as put increased pressure on readiness for transfer students.

What are your thoughts about these new policies under discussion?  

Get more information at The Chronicle of Higher Education here.