Are ‘Students First’ in state’s plan?

Community colleges are different from four-year colleges. It is wrong for the state to save $28 million through an administrative consolidation of community colleges. The plan is called “Students First.”

Let’s make certain that we truly mean it. It is simplistic to believe that by reducing administrative costs, students will not be impacted. And, let’s be clear, the faculty members can’t do it all. If graduation rates are low now, the situation will get worse under this plan.

Here is why: It is unfortunate that our institutions have the name “college” in their appellation. Community colleges are institutions of higher education but they are not the same as selective colleges. In a state with a highly educated population, the majority of the public sees community colleges through the prism of their experience at four-year colleges.

In these colleges, counselors sit in their offices waiting for students to make appointments, faculty members wait to see students by appointments during their office hours, financial aid officers are available for students by appointment only. It is up to the student to seek out the services that are necessary for their academic survival.

The services, as good as they are, adopt a passive posture. But this image of the selective college cannot be further from the truth at the community colleges. Navigating the academic maze is as foreign to an underprepared student as a walk on the moon. They get discouraged at best and disheartened at worst. They drop out. And they drop out in droves. Nationally, only 28 percent make it in three years and in Connecticut, the success rate is in the teens.

The great majority of students attending community college have academic, personal, emotional, financial and learning difficulties. Some students who attend community colleges are perfectly well-prepared for the rigor of the curriculum but they are the exception rather than the rule. They usually choose to attend to take advantage of the lower tuition cost. But the majority of community college students have difficulty in one area or another — or in all.

For these students to have a chance at survival, it is important that the faculty members in the classroom are supported by a team of administrators that can help the faculty member in diagnosing and correcting whatever is preventing students from doing well and, eventually, graduating. So, rather than give up on community college students by cutting administrative services, the leaders of the state, interested in ensuring that more students graduate from these institutions, must enhance the support services that are so needed — instead of reducing them.

Why coddle underprepared students? If one sees attending college as activity for the private gain, rather than the public good, then the opportunity to fail is all that these students deserve. But, this is shortsighted. Society in the long run suffers. Community college dropouts are expensive. These individuals, in general, end up paying less or no taxes, adopting risky behaviors that end up costing much more in health care and in incarceration. Dropouts suck resources out of society that could be used in other ways for the good of all.

Who suffers most? A large percentage of students at the community college are poor, minorities and/or immigrants or children of immigrants. For these populations, the American dream is so ethereal and so difficult to obtain that they lose hope. They lose interest, do poorly, and the downward spiral of achievement begins until the gap is so wide that it appears to be insurmountable.

As leaders, we have two options: We either throw these lives by the wayside, satisfy our collective guilt by providing them an open door to higher education that is really a revolving door or we make sure that we stop this downward spiral by providing the necessary social remediation, financial help and academic remediation to those who make the effort to come to our doors.

Clearly, those of us in the community colleges deeply believe in the latter option. The mettle of our character is tested during difficult times. Let us not fix the fiscal problems by giving up on those who need us the most. Eduardo Marti is president emeritus of Queensborough Community College and former vice chancellor of Community Colleges for CUNY. Marti was also acting president of Middlesex Community College in Middletown and executive dean at Tunxis Community College in Farmington. He is the author of “America’s Broken Promise: Bridging the Community College Achievement Gap.”