From the editor — March 2015
TERESA WILLIAMS | THE HARBINGER
In the last issue of the Harbinger, the article “Obama Proposes Free Community College” reported on President Barack Obama’s proposal to make a two-year community college education something that is available to Americans with no out-of-pocket cost. After unveiling the so named “America’s College Promise” via a press video in early January, the president pushed the proposal both in Tennessee and, later, in the 2015 State of the Union address.
At this point, America’s College Promise is more of an idea (dare I say dream), really, and, not surprisingly, there are plenty of politicians, columnists and news commentators more than happy criticize Obama’s latest attempt at education reform. Over the past two months, those critics have pulled no punches in saying that the plan fails to identify a source of funding, gives students something that they could pay for themselves and reinforces a dated community college system with low graduation rates. But then again, they are missing the point.
The president didn’t propose making the first two years of college free for hard-working students because it sounded like a fun idea at which to throw loose money. The whole point was that a post-secondary education, whether it be one class or a doctorate, has become nearly a necessity in our working society. And, just like taxpayers have been paying to give kids the first 12 grades of learning, maybe the time has come to enable students of all ages to freely get the specific college-level training needed to get them into a 21st century career. And community colleges may just be our best bet to get that started.
The fact that less than half of the community college students in the U.S. graduate with a degree has been misconstrued. College, especially community college, is a take-as-needed commodity. When you have a headache, you take some aspirin, but as soon as your head feels better, you stop. So too, if someone goes to college to prepare for a career and they get offered a job before graduating, they may just stop right there, and that’s okay.
While some jobs require extensive technical training (I’m an engineering student, I know), many others require less than a degree. According to the American Association of Community Colleges, 39 percent of all accolades awarded by U.S. community colleges in 2012-2013 were certificates not degrees, and these certificate recipients probably didn’t graduate, but that doesn’t mean their college failed them.
The initiative to make two-year colleges freely available isn’t a new one either. In addition to the new Tennessee Promise, which Obama credited as a great source of inspiration, we can see the more local programs of Peoria Promise, Galesburg Promise (for Carl Sandburg College), and the Chicago Star Scholarship program, which begins fall 2015. The details of these programs differ, but they all promise free community college classes to locally-rooted students who will maintain strong GPA’s. Obama’s plan simply takes this to the national level.
America’s College Promise may not be anywhere close to being a “shovel ready” project, and, like that cocktail napkin sketch of your dream house, it may be built mainly on starry-eyed optimism. But this symbolic moment has opened the doors of discussion into an area yet untamed on the national scale. Now is the time to talk about this and figure out the next big step in education. After all, with enough effort and collaboration, dreams (and promises) can become reality. Or were you not listening in class today?