To fill ‘education deserts,’ more states want community colleges to offer bachelor’s degrees

The Hechinger Account is a national nonprofit newsroom that reports on one topic guidance Sign up for our weekly newsletters to get stories like this delivered directly to your inbox Consider supporting our stories and becoming a member in the current era MUSCATINE Iowa The suspect moved menacingly toward her but Elexiana Oliva stood her ground gun drawn and in a half crouch as she calmly tried to talk him down The confrontation wasn t real and neither was the gun But the lesson was deadly serious Oliva is a criminal justice major at Muscatine Society College in this largely agricultural locality along the Mississippi River She was in a simulation lab with that scenario projected on a screen as classmates watched spellbound Just Oliva is determined to become a police detective a plan that includes earning a bachelor s degree after she finishes her associate degree here But she ll have to go somewhere else to do it likely in her episode to a university in Texas Oliva and her classmates here are among the million adults across the country who the American Council on Guidance estimates live beyond a reasonable commute from the nearest four-year university a trouble getting worse as private colleges in rural places close population university campuses merge or shut down and rural universities cut majors and programs It s not our fault that we grew up in a place where there s not a lot of big colleges and big universities Oliva reported Iowa has joined a growing number of states that are considering letting locality colleges like this one offer bachelor s degrees or where group colleges have already started adding them as a way of filling these so-called rural higher mentoring deserts and training workers in rural places for jobs in fields where there are growing shortages It would be a big game-changer especially for those who have a low income or a medium income and want to go and further our schooling Oliva explained About half of states allow population colleges to offer bachelor s degrees In Iowa which is among the half that don t lawmakers have commissioned a scrutiny to determine whether it should add bachelor s degrees in several programs at the state s area colleges An interim description is due in May A similar proposal in Illinois is backed by that state s governor JB Pritzker who has stated the move would make it easier and more affordable for residents to get degrees particularly working adults in rural communities Three-quarters of society college students in Illinois revealed they would pursue bachelor s degrees if they could do it on the same campus according to a survey published by Pritzker s office Kentucky s legislature is considering converting one technical and society college into a four-year institution offering both technical and bachelor s degrees Certain Wyoming neighborhood colleges have also added a limited number of bachelor s degrees And in Texas Temple College will open a center in June where students at the two-year constituents institution will be able to earn bachelor s degrees through partner Texas A M University-Central Texas including in engineering system with a concentration in semiconductors When you can offer university classes on group college campuses that makes a world of difference to rural students announced Christy Ponce the president of Temple What s been blocking multiple of these students from continuing their educations Ponce mentioned is the sheer distance There s not a general university option within an hour or more away And affordability and transportation fences are huge issues Fewer than percent of rural Americans hold bachelor s degrees or higher according to the National Center for Learning Statistics compared to the national average of percent And the gap is getting wider the U S Department of Agriculture finds in its the majority up-to-date analysis of this Significantly fewer students in rural places than in urban areas believe that they can get degrees a Gallup survey for the Walton Family Foundation uncovered citing the lack of nearby four-year universities as a principal reason In those states that already allow population colleges to offer bachelor s degrees they re often limited to certain high-demand fields such as teaching and nursing Even as this idea has spread America s residents society colleges collectively confer only about percent of bachelor s degrees each year the American Association of Society Colleges reports In a large number of places what s stopping them from giving out more is opposition from four-year universities and colleges a multitude of of which are increasingly hard up for students as the number of -year-olds begins to fall a phenomenon enrollment managers have dubbed the demographic cliff That Illinois proposal for example is stalled in committee after several residents and private university presidents issued a declaration opposing it Negotiations are continuing While district colleges in California have been allowed since to offer bachelor s degrees several have been blocked from adding four-year programs that the California State University System contends it already offers An independent mediator has been brought in to resolve the impasse And while the two-year community College of Western Idaho will launch a bachelor s degree in business administration in the fall it s doing so only over the objections of Boise State University which noted it could hurt effective and efficient postsecondary teaching in Idaho cannibalizing limited support available to postsecondary learning and duplicating degree offerings District colleges also need more students their enrollment declined by percent from to and they face that same impending demographic cliff Those that add bachelor s degrees increase their full-time enrollment from percent to percent research conducted at the University of Michigan has located The principal impetus for the largely bipartisan push to offer bachelor s degrees at locality colleges however is to train more workers for those fields in which there are shortages What I think is misunderstood is that in general these are not like the baccalaureates that conventional four-year institutions offer commented Davis Jenkins a senior research scholar at the Society College Research Center at Teachers College Columbia University The Hechinger Analysis which produced this story is an independent unit of Teachers College Bachelor s degrees at region colleges explained Jenkins meet an economic need for bachelor s degree graduates that isn t being met by other institutions That includes by helping rural workers move up in their jobs without leaving home It s all about serving our workforce requirements stated Iowa state Rep Taylor Collins Republican chair of Iowa s House Committee on Higher Training who requested the inquiry into whether bachelor s degrees should be offered at society colleges in that state It s a way to upskill our workforce In his own district south of Muscatine we re kind of on an island where we only have the neighborhood college especially since the closing of nearby private Iowa Wesleyan University in There are a lot of students who are place-bound There are a lot of students who want to live locally and not move away to get a bachelor s degree That s a focus of the ongoing investigation revealed Emily Shields executive director of Locality Colleges for Iowa which is conducting it Sometimes people have ties responsibilities jobs family things where moving to where there is a degree available isn t an option for them Shields revealed Sure she declared rural students can take courses online But you re not getting the candidate services you re not getting initiatives you re not getting the other sort of enrichment sponsorship and belonging that a lot of our students I think are looking for A great number of also say they re looking for the kind of individual attention they get in their hometown and at a population college such as the one in Muscatine which has an enrollment of Shiloh Morter stayed in his hometown of Muscatine Iowa to go to society college Among the advantages he says The sunsets here are pretty nice I can tell you there s not a whole lot of other places that have clouds like we do Credit Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Overview Shiloh Morter bikes to campus on all but the very coldest days He plans to become an engineer but figured I would save the money and go to society college and try and branch out and develop better habits first reported Morter who is In the automotive system garage off the main corridor of the small school cars were lined up neatly with their hoods popped Nursing students worked on anatomically correct crash test dummy-style patients Twenty-year-old Mykenah Pothoff enrolled at the college when it debuted a registered nursing activity saving herself money on tuition and a nearly hourlong drive each way to the University of Iowa She also was worried about just like finding my way around the university which has more than students Jake Siefers is majoring in psychology at an Iowa society college If he could stay and get his bachelor s degree in the same place it would be huge he says There s a lot of untapped human feasible in rural places that could benefit from more access to higher guidance Credit Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Account Jake Siefers is a psychology major planning to go on to get bachelor s and master s degrees Siefers disclosed he hopes to help other people who like him are recovering from alcoholism and for whom he explained there are too insufficient services in Iowa So he came home to Muscatine to start working toward an associate degree at the region college I could afford it and it was close and I definitely know a lot of people that work here declared Siefers It s great coming in here and being like Hey I went to high school with you and you work in the office I mean that s everyone in Iowa right If he could stay and get his bachelor s degree in Muscatine it would be huge he commented There s a lot of untapped human prospective in rural places that could benefit from the kind of access to a higher schooling that is now more limited reported Siefers Letting students like them finish bachelor s degrees near where they live would make it easier for everybody disclosed Jaylea Perez another psychology major who also plans to earn one Totally having bachelor s degrees available would make rural students aspire to them who otherwise might not announced Naomi DeWinter president of Muscatine Area College Everything opens up to them mentioned DeWinter in a coffee shop across the highway from the Walmart She sees the preponderance foreseen among people already working such as paraprofessionals in schools who want to become teachers a state job board lists nearly vacancies in Iowa for teachers DeWinter recalled a graduate so exemplary that he was featured in a promotional video who after earning his associate degree started substitute-teaching while commuting in his free time to the University of Iowa to get his bachelor s degree one unit at a time He disclosed That s how I m juggling my work my family and the affordability she noted His whole career is going to be over before he s a full-time instructor I feel as though we failed him Like the substitute educator students commented they want to stay in Muscatine despite those limits They like the peace and quiet compared to cities hardly anyone ever honks they noted and the sense of population evident among the friends who run into each other at the Hy-Vee We don t have the best view of the Milky Way but we for sure definitely don t have a bad one mentioned Shiloh Morter ticking down a list of advantages to living on the sweeping plain carpeted with cultivated fields and dotted with barns and silos And yeah the sunsets here are pretty nice I can tell you there s not a whole lot of other places that have clouds like we do Contact writer Jon Marcus at - - or jmarcus hechingerreport org This story about rural higher teaching and neighborhood college bachelor s degrees was produced by The Hechinger Review a nonprofit independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in mentoring Sign up for our higher guidance newsletter Listen to our higher instruction podcast The post To fill tuition deserts more states want group colleges to offer bachelor s degrees appeared first on MinnPost