- Community colleges cutting back on open access, By Tamar Lewin, June 23, 2010, New York Times: “When Giovanny Villalta tried to register for winter-term classes at Mount San Antonio College here, he hit the wall. ‘I was assigned a late registration slot, and by the time I was allowed to register, everything was full,’ Mr. Villalta said. ‘Biology, full. Anatomy, full. Physics, full. Psychology, full. History of Asia, full. Any history class that would count toward transferring to a four-year U.C. campus, full.’ So Mr. Villalta, who had been a high school athlete, ended up taking track – and nothing else. ‘It was pretty frustrating,’ he said. ‘You feel like you’re wasting time, and your life’s just going by.’ In this economy, community colleges are widely seen as the solution to many problems. Displaced workers are registering in droves to earn credentials that might get them back in the game. Strapped parents, daunted by the cost of four-year universities, are encouraging their children to spend two years at the local community college…”
- For-profit colleges find new market niche, By Tamar Lewin, June 23, 2010, New York Times: “Kaplan University has an offer for California community college students who cannot get a seat in a class they need: under a memorandum of understanding with the chancellor of the community college system, they can take the online version at Kaplan, with a 42 percent tuition discount. The opportunity would not come cheap. Kaplan charges $216 a credit with the discount, compared with $26 a credit at California’s community colleges. Supporters of for-profit education say the offer underscores how Kaplan and other profit-making colleges can help accommodate the mushrooming demand for higher education. The number of California students choosing for-profit schools has been increasing rapidly, state officials say. At the same time, government officials have become increasingly concerned that students at for-profit colleges are far more likely than those at public institutions to take out large loans – and default on them…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty