They’re called “Pell runners” — after enrolling at a community college they apply for a federal Pell grant, collect as much as $7,400, then vanish.

Since fall 2021, California’s community colleges have given more than $5 million to Pell runners, according to monthly reports they sent to the California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office. Colleges also report they’ve given nearly $1.5 million in state and local aid to these scammers.

The chancellor’s office began requiring the state’s 116 community colleges to submit these reports three years ago, after fraud cases surged.

At the time, the office said it suspected . Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government loosened some restrictions around financial aid, making it easier for students to prove they were eligible, and provided special one-time grants to help keep them enrolled. Once these pandemic-era exceptions ended in 2023 and some classes returned to in-person instruction, college officials said they expected fraud to subside. 

It hasn’t. In January, the chancellor’s office suspected 25% of college applicants were fraudulent, said Paul Feist, a spokesperson for the office. 

“This is getting significantly worse,” said Todd Coston, an associate vice chancellor with the Kern Community College District. He said that last year, “something changed and all of a sudden everything spiked like crazy.”

Online classes that historically don’t fill up were suddenly overwhelmed with students — a sign that many of them might be fake — Coston said. Administrators at other large districts, including the Los Rios Community College District in Sacramento, the Mt. San Antonio Community College District in Walnut, California and the Los Angeles Community College District, told CalMatters that fraudsters are evading each new cybersecurity strategy. 

The reason for the reported increase in fraud is because the chancellor’s office and college administrators are getting better at detecting it, he said. Since 2022, the state has allocated more than , cybersecurity and other changes in the online application process at community colleges.

The reports the colleges submitted don’t include how much fraud they prevented. 

The rise in suspected fraud coincides with years of efforts, both at the state and local level, to increase access to community college. Schools are reducing fees — or making college free — while legislators have worked to simplify and expand financial aid. Those efforts accelerated during the pandemic, when 

It’s not surprising, then, that “bad actors” would take advantage of the system’s good intentions, Feist said. 

Financial aid fraud is not new

College officials suspect most of the fake students are bots and often, they display tell-tale signs. In Sacramento, community colleges started seeing an influx of applications from Russia, China, and India during the start of the pandemic. Around the same time, administrators at Mt. San Antonio College saw students using Social Security numbers of retirees. Others had home addresses that were abandoned lots. Uncommon email domains, such as AOL.com, were another red flag. 

These scams aren’t new. The federal government has long required colleges to report instances of financial aid fraud. Every year, the federal government closes around , including a recent  who stole nearly a million dollars by collecting fraudulent student loans. California community colleges also say they’ve spotted fraudulent applications from people trying to get an .edu email address in order to receive student discounts.

When the chancellor’s office began requiring community colleges to file monthly reports, it asked for the number of fake applications and the amount of money they gave to fraudsters.

CalMatters submitted a public records request for the data, broken down by campus. After the request was initially rejected, CalMatters appealed and received an anonymized copy of all of the monthly reports, lacking individual campus details. 

The reports show that between September 2021 and January 2024, the colleges received roughly 900,000 fraudulent college applications and gave fraudsters more than $5 million in federal aid, as well as nearly $1.5 million in state and local aid. 

The numbers show that fraud represents less than 1% of the total amount of financial aid awarded to community college students in the same time period. It’s hard to tell how accurate the data is because compliance is spotty, with some months missing reports from as many as half the colleges. 

More fraud, in more places

To understand how fraud is evolving, the chancellor’s office uses several sources of information and data, Feist said. One indicator is an atypical bump in applications. 

“If I saw, for example, that a college that only gets 1,000 applications in some time frame gets 5,000, you kind of know something is probably up,” said Valerie Lundy-Wagner, a vice chancellor for the community college system. 

The chancellor’s office provided CalMatters with anonymous application data for each month from September 2021 to January 2024. CalMatters analyzed the data using two different techniques to identify statistical outliers in the application data and asked the office to verify the methodology. The office repeatedly declined.

According to the analysis, more than 50 of the state’s 116 community colleges saw at least one unusual spike in the number of applications they received during that time frame. In the last year, colleges have seen more unusual spikes than at any point since 2021. Along with fraud, however, outliers could also reflect normal fluctuations in applications or the . 

“What we’re hearing is that (fraud) is happening more widespread than people are letting on, but people just have their heads in the sand because it looks good to have your enrollment going up,” said Coston with the Kern Community College District. Many college administrators say improvements in artificial intelligence have made it easier for people to attempt fraud on a larger scale. 

Yet clamping down too hard on fraud can have unintended consequences. More than 20% of community college students in California don’t receive Pell grants they’re eligible for. Administrative hurdles — including the verification process — are one reason why, according to  by researchers at UC Davis. To help, the federal government is trying to simplify its financial aid application, but in some cases, it’s . 

“We’ve overcorrected at times, even in policy, and in how stringently we’re verifying students relative to the amount of fraud in the system,” said Jake Brymer, a deputy director with the California Student Aid Commission. As a result, he said, real low-income students get pushed out.

Kicking real students out of class

Sometimes, the fraud detection backfires on actual students, ousting people like Martin Romero.  

In order to graduate from East Los Angeles College, Romero, 20, must take American history, so last fall he enrolled in an online class where students can watch pre-recorded lectures on their own time. 

He said it’s all he had time for. Romero takes four classes at East Los Angeles College each semester and serves as its student body president. He also helps out at his family’s auto body shop, sometimes as much as 15 hours a week. 

On the first day of class last fall, he said the online portal, Canvas, wasn’t working on his computer.

That day, the American history professor did a test through Canvas, asking students to respond to a prompt in order to prove they were not a bot. Romero didn’t answer, so the professor dropped him from the class. 

“I was freaking out,” he said, and wrote to the professor as soon as he found out, begging to be reinstated. The professor told him the class was already full again, so letting him in would mean kicking someone else out. 

For the college’s Academic Senate, the faculty group that governs academic matters, fake students is one of the top three issues, said its president, Leticia Barajas. 

“We’re frustrated with the fact that some of these courses are getting filled really quickly,” she said. “We see it as an access issue for our students.”

She said there’s been an uptick in recent months, especially in certain kinds of online classes, that has forced professors to focus on hunting bots instead of teaching. Professors now are expected to test their students in the first weeks, asking them to submit answers to prompts, sign copies of the syllabus, or send other evidence to prove they are real. 

Increasingly, she said, the bots are evading detection, especially with the help of AI. “They’re submitting assignments. It’s gibberish,” she said.

The endless, multi-million dollar game of combating fraud

Campus and state officials described fraud detection as a game of whack-a-mole. “When we get better at addressing one thing, something else pops up,” said Lundy-Wagner. “That’s sort of the nature of fraud.”

To fight fraud, she said, the chancellor’s office, the 73 independently governed districts and their colleges all must work together, including those who oversee information technology, enrollment and financial aid. Part of the challenge is that the system is so “decentralized,” she said.

The largest reform underway is , the state’s community college application portal, which will offer more cybersecurity, Feist said. He also said there are other “promising” short-term projects. 

One of them, a software tool known as ID.Me, launched in February. The contract with the software company, , gives it permission to check college applicants for identification, including video interviews in certain cases. Privacy experts have warned that the company’s video technology could be  

To mitigate these privacy concerns and avoid creating enrollment barriers, applicants need to opt in to the new verification software. 

In the first few days after its implementation, 29% of applicants opted in to ID.Me’s new vetting process. Some applicants started the verification process but never finished, said Feist, while others are ineligible because they’re under the age of 18. The rest chose not to verify their identity for other reasons, including many who are suspected bots. 

‘We’re just trying to survive’

In Los Angeles, community colleges have already seen a drop in suspicious applications, said Nicole Albo-Lopez, a vice chancellor with the district. But she’s skeptical the problem is solved. “The lull we see, I don’t believe we’ll be able to sustain,” she said. “They’ll find another way to come in.” 

Her district is now concerned that bots are trying to steal data or intellectual property, not just financial aid. “Say I have 400 sections of English 101 online. There are 400 variations of readings, assignments, peer-to-peer questions that somebody can go in and scrape,” Albo-Lopez said. 

Barajas said faculty at East Los Angeles College are so overwhelmed by bots they haven’t discussed the potential risk to their intellectual property: “We’re at such a level where we’re just trying to survive.”

Meanwhile, students like Romero who are wrongly mistaken for bots must develop their own survival skills. When the professor denied the request to re-enroll, he signed up for the same course in the one format that was still available — in-person. The class met every Monday and Wednesday at 7:10 a.m., and the professor deducted points for anyone who was late.

“It was torture,” he said, noting that he missed two classes and was late to around four. He finished the class with a B but said he would have had an A if he had gotten into the class he wanted.

As student body president, he said he’s been outspoken about the issue. While he was able to fulfill his history requirement, he worries that other students may not be so lucky. 

Data reporter Erica Yee contributed to this reporting. 

Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.

Four months after officially beginning work in August to revise its funding model, the N.C. Community College System (NCCCS) unveiled its new plan, called Propel NC, at the State Board of Community Colleges meeting Jan. 19.

The plan received a unanimous vote of approval from all 58 members of the N.C. Association of Community College Presidents (NCACCP) in December. The full State Board is set to vote on the modernization plan in February and then will request consideration of Propel NC by the legislature during the short session in April. Between now and then, NCCCS stakeholders are working to engage business leaders across the state, too.

“This is an orchestrated effort with businesses in all 100 counties and across all 58 colleges,” State Board Chair Tom Looney said at Friday’s meeting. “Exciting times are ahead for us here in the North Carolina Community College System.”

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Propel NC

The NCCCS’ current state funding model was created in 2010 and last updated in 2013.

The vast majority of funding for the state’s 58 community colleges comes from state appropriations, with  allocated each year of this biennium.

The system’s current funding model allocates resources to the colleges in proportion to the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) students they enroll in each of their programs. Certain courses receive more state funds than others based on a four-tier funding model.

Under the proposed model, funding based on FTE would remain in place, but the current FTE tiers would shift to “workforce sectors” instead. The 16-person Propel NC work group says this will move the NCCCS toward a labor-market driven model of community college programs.

The anticipated cost for this part is approximately $68.6 million, .

Under this model, all curriculum and continuing education (CE) courses would reside in the same workforce sector. A nursing curriculum and nursing CE course would be funded the same way, for example.

The proposed sectors largely focus on health care, technology, and trades. Courses not on this list would be held harmless and retain their same value, but they would not be labeled in tiers. There would be a catch-all sector for transfer and general education courses.

“Tier funding never resonated with anyone, no one ever knew what (the tiers) meant,” Finance Committee Chair Lisa Estep said. “This model… resonates with everyone and ultimately brings so much back to the student and to business, so I think its great we’re going down this path.”

Under the proposed model, courses will be ranked and valued by statewide salary job demand data. The course rankings will be updated every three years.

On Friday, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, an ex-officio member of the State Board, expressed his support for the plan.

“Moving from tiers-based to labor-market driven, I would suppose that would give us a lot more flexibility, so I think that’s very good,” Robinson said. “Community colleges are going to be essential (to the economy)… so I’m glad to see the work that’s going on.”

In addition to instructional funding based on FTE, colleges receive a base allocation for institutional and academic support, which includes additional funding for multi-campus centers.

The NCCCS modernization plan proposes to increase the base allocation 5.8%, “which closes the gap to actual spending patterns and account for inflation,” the NCCCS document says. “This modification would also increase the enrollment allotment above 750 FTE based on this increase in other costs funding.” The anticipated cost for this request is about $24.4 million.

The NCCCS modernization plan also includes two other focus areas, listed below.

• Enrollment increase reserve. The current enrollment growth reserve was implemented in 2010 in response to the large number of students enrolling in community colleges after the Great Recession. The system wants to request $6 million in non-recurring funds for a fixed per-FTE amount for any colleges that go over the enrollment threshold set by their FTE for the fiscal year. The system would then like to build replenishment of the fund into the recurring enrollment growth fund in the state budget.
• Excess tuition retention. Excess tuition receipts currently fund the enrollment increase reserve. The NCCCS work group would like to change that, allowing excess tuition receipts to return to the college which generated them but only on years when the system as a whole generates excess receipts.

Together, the request has a nearly $100 million price tag. Meetings between NCCCS leaders and legislators have already started, per the system.

“I couldn’t be more proud of where we’ve arrived at this point in time. I think this is a game changer for our system,” NCCCS President Dr. Jeff Cox said in November. “It answers the call that I think we’re hearing from our legislature and our governor about the community colleges’ critical role in meeting the workforce needs of the future of our state. …It aligns our system in a way we’ve just never been before.”

You can view more details about Propel NC, including projections for the proposed workforce sectors, . You can read more about how community colleges are currently funded .

Increased oversight of presidential reelections

State law has historically given the State Board of Community Colleges the authority to approve or deny the election of local college presidents by local boards of trustees. The new budget, , adds reelection authority to the Board.

This is being interpreted as requiring State Board approval for any contract renewals, extensions, or amendments for local presidents, and the State Board on Friday proposed an to reflect that.

On Friday, the Board approved two reelections: President Dr. Patty Pfeiffer and President Dr. Janet Spriggs.

The Board also approved Dr. Michael Rodgers as the next president of . The college’s board of trustees shortly after the meeting. The search process began after Cox announced his new role as system president.

“We did a nationwide search and had 42 applicants for the position,” said Wilkes Community College Board Chair Jay Vannoy. “We are excited to announce Dr. Michael Rodgers as the next president of WCC. He has the education, knowledge, and experience to lead our college. We are looking forward to working with him to continue and build upon the work Wilkes Community College is doing to educate and train our students. I also want to thank Morgan Francis for his great leadership as interim president during this transition period.”

Dr. Rodgers will take the helm in early June.

The meeting included several other personnel decisions and announcements.

• The Board announced Kelly Klug as the new director of grants with a salary of $105,000. Klug will serve as a resource for grants within the system.
• The Board voted to create a new position, , who will lead the Career & College Readiness Graduate (CCRG) program. The position will be funded through a reorganization of system funds.
• Cox also recognized two new staff members: Dr. Chris Harrington, the new lead of ApprenticeshipNC, and Dr. Zach Barricklow, for the new position of associate vice president for strategy and rural innovation.

Student completion strategies

Strategies to advance student success and completion were discussed several times at January’s meeting.

First, the Board’s “transformative discussion” focused on strategies for increasing student completion.

The discussion included information on Collaborative, a program established by the City University of New York (CUNY) in 2007 to increase timely degree completion. Today, the program serves 25,000 students a year, and the collaborative partners with institutions across the country to replicate their model.

Dr. Shun Robertson, the UNC System’s vice president for access and success strategy, spoke about how the UNC System has replicated this model with a focus on community college transfers. The program, , provides financial aid and advising to eligible students.

Only 36% of N.C. community college students graduate within two years of transferring to the UNC System, Robertson said — nearly 20 percentage points lower than the four-year completion rate for first-time, full-time students. Despite this gap, community college transfers have, on average, equivalent GPAs in their first year as their peers.

“So they are qualified, they are doing well in our institutions,” Robertson said. “They’re just not graduating at the same rate. So why is this?”

TrACe is currently offered at three institutions right now — Appalachian State, UNC Greensboro, and East Carolina University.

Scott Byington, associate vice president of onboarding and advising at (CCCC), also spoke about student completion strategies.

At CCCC, 62% of students are part-time, he said. About a third of students are parents, and 17% are single parents. Another third of students struggle with housing and/or food insecurity.

The college has worked to address these challenges in a few ways: more intensive advising, accelerated course options, emergency funding for micro-grants, and laptop loaners, among other things.

These strategies are working, Byington said. But most of the strategies are funded through grants, which don’t always offer very sustainable funding.

“We need these graduates. There are thousands of jobs coming to North Carolina, and we need students who are ready,” he said. “It’s going to require investment to get more of these students to not just start, but to finish.”

Minority Male Success Initiative

The Board also heard and approved its , which was established in fall 2003 to improve the retention and graduation rates of minority male students. Since then, “over 10,000 students have received support and assistance towards achieving their educational, professional, and civic goals,” the report says.

This is the first year the system has had to provide a report regarding the program.

As of July 2022, 21 community colleges received funding for the initiative. The amount of state funding has remained the same since 2016 — $810,000 for a 3-4 year period. The report says funding is “allocated through a competitive funding process.”

“This is a critical program,” said Sarah West, co-chair of the Board’s programs and student success committee.

Several Board members, including West, emphasized the need for such an important program to include more funding to expand the initiative to more colleges and to expand the work happening at each campus.

You can read examples of how colleges with initiative funding used the money starting

ERP, student food insecurity, and more

• The Board approved funding to for the period Sept. 1, 2023, through Dec. 31, 2025, for “an amount not to exceed $2,000,000 to reimburse the pilot colleges for costs incurred for the modernized ERP.” These updates should eventually improve data collection and sharing across the system.
• Tony Pile, the Board’s student member and president of the North Carolina Comprehensive College Student Government Association (N4CSGA), read a letter promoting the importance of student representation on local boards of trustees, based on a motion passed at the N4CSGA fall conference. The letter asked the Board to formally vote to maintain the ex-officio student member on local boards.
• Pile read another letter asking the board to acknowledge and address food insecurity on campuses across the state. Over 50 of the 58 campuses have a food bank, he said, but the N4CSGA would like to see a fully operational food pantry on every campus by fall 2024.
• The Board approved to continue support of a prison education project carried out by Pamlico Community College and Pamlico Correctional Institution. You can read EdNC’s report on the program from August 2022 .
• Cox approved the following colleges to offer with an effective term of fall 2024: Cape Fear Community College, James Sprunt Community College, Sandhills Community College, and South Piedmont Community College.
• The Board also met in closed session at the end of its meeting to discuss winners for this year’s NCCCS faculty and staff awards.

The full Board is scheduled to meet next Feb. 15-16 in Raleigh.

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

A revolution is in the making at California’s community colleges: No more grades, no more sitting through lectures or seminars, no more deadlines. In a pilot program taking shape across eight of the state’s community colleges, the only requirement for some associate degrees will be “competency.” 

Students who can prove that they have the relevant skills can earn that degree. 

In theory, this model, known as “competency-based education,” could provide students with more flexibility and the potential to attain degrees faster in key job sectors. The pilot is geared toward working adults, many of whom  during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

As the state’s population of K-12 students continues to shrink, leaving colleges with fewer students right out of high school, the pilot aims to attract adults who are already in the workforce by “valuing their lived and work experience,” said Madera Community College President Ángel Reyna.

If successful, these community colleges will set themselves apart from every other two-year institution in the country. The pilot, which launched in 2021, provides  with up to $515,000 over the course of four years to each design a single associate degree program using this new model. 

The goal is for students to be able to enroll at some point in the 2024-25 academic year, said Aisha Lowe, an executive vice chancellor at the California Community College Chancellor’s Office. In practice, colleges must overcome bureaucratic and logistical hurdles to make the new system work. At least one community college says it is struggling to hit the state’s deadline.

The challenge is to create something that works “but isn’t so different that colleges can still wrap their heads around it and engage,” Lowe said. “It’s definitely unprecedented.”

A new way to measure learning 

The new model restructures the requirements of a degree to reflect what students have learned, rather than the amount of time they spend in class. 

Currently, all college degrees require a certain number of hours spent in a classroom, either in-person or virtually. An associate degree, which California’s community colleges offer, requires roughly 3,000 hours spent in a classroom or on homework in a traditional academic year. That’s why some refer to it as a “two-year degree.” 

Teachers get paid in part based on the number of hours they teach. Because of the high number of part-time students, the state funds colleges and universities based largely on the number of hours that a student spends in class, not the number of students themselves. 

In this current system, students may be required to sit through classes to get college credit even if they can demonstrate they already have some of the requisite skills. Students who may have less time for school because of work or family obligations lose out too, said Charla Long, the president of the Competency-Based Education Network, a consultant for California’s pilot program. 

“We’ve created an inequitable system because it’s so time bound,” she said.

In the new system, students seeking an associate degree in early childhood education at Shasta College in Redding will take 60 different exams, each one testing a specific skill, said Buffy Tanner, the college’s director of innovation and special projects. Students in the program will have materials to teach themselves, teachers will be available to answer questions and counselors will be able to provide wraparound support.

Currently, a student is required to take 20 semester-long classes for that same degree. Students in the new program will be able to take an exam up to three times and can move as quickly or as slowly as they want, Tanner said. In-state students in the new program who do not qualify for financial aid will pay the same total tuition, just shy of $2,800 for an associate degree, not including the cost of books, classroom supplies, or other miscellaneous fees. Shasta College, like the other colleges in the pilot, is still trying to figure out how much to pay faculty in the new system.

Not every student can succeed in this self-paced format. Tanner said the plan is to vet students for the program through questions about their lives and study habits: “Do you need external deadlines? What kind of self-discipline do you have?”

“We have to make sure students fully understand what they’re getting into,” she said.

A growing phenomenon

Such  have existed for decades. Since the 1970s, some colleges and universities have experimented with new models of teaching and learning that offer more flexibility and try to evaluate students based on what they know, not on how much time they spent in class, Long said.

In 1997, a group of 19 governors from Western states agreed to develop a private, nonprofit institution, known as , to provide “competency-based” education. With roughly 150,000 students today, it’s the . Though headquartered in Utah, the university is entirely online and boasts students from all 50 states. 

Other large for-profit and non-profit university systems have experimented with the same model, including Capella University, an online college, and Southern New Hampshire University. California followed. In 2018, , the state created a new community college, known as Calbright, which is free, entirely online, and exclusively “competency-based.”

“This is radically different, and an incredibly powerful way to support our students,” Calbright’s  says about its model.

A  of nearly 500 colleges and universities across the country found that 13% were already offering at least one degree or certificate through competency-based education and roughly half of those surveyed were in the process of adopting one, though the report noted that there’s “considerable variation” about how they define the model. 

Homework after 10 p.m. makes progress slow

For Calbright student Jeremy Cox, the appeal was less about the instructional method and more about the convenience of online education. He started taking online classes in 2016 through for-profit companies such as Udemy and Coursera.

“To be able to just pull out a phone and bust out a couple of lessons from Udemy or Coursera, that’s very helpful,” he said.

One day while at a park near Long Beach with his children, Cox ran into a woman who told him about Calbright College. While Udemy and Coursera do not focus on a particular instructional method, Cox said his experience at Calbright College has been pretty similar, with two key differences. Unlike Udemy or Coursera, he said, Calbright provides teachers who are more available and respond quickly to questions via Slack, a messaging app. The other difference is social interaction. He has become involved in building community among his classmates and serves as the college’s first student body president.

Calbright has had consistent enrollment growth each academic year since it began, despite  from the state auditor’s office. State legislators have repeatedly tried to defund the school, pointing to poor academic outcomes.

Even though the college advertises that students can finish certificate programs in less than a year, CalMatters found that . The data only runs through the spring of 2022, and Calbright was unable to provide updated figures.

Cox said he had intended to complete an IT certification at Calbright in three to six months with a goal of one day getting a job that involves user design, artificial intelligence or blockchain. Now, he expects it to take about a year and a half. 

“My study time is when the kids go to bed. I only have after 10 p.m.,” he said. “And then with student body responsibilities, my time is split between the two. Half of it is with the student body and half is my studies.”

Creating an ‘unprecedented’ new system

With this new pilot, these eight community colleges in California aim to go one step further than Calbright College, using a similar concept but creating new curricula and setting up new systems to provide even more flexibility for students. Calbright is not in the pilot, but Lowe said the college has provided advice, such as strategies to support students outside the classroom. 

By the 2024-25 school year, these eight colleges plan to change part of their state funding formula, faculty pay, and financial aid regulations. They’re also adapting the licenses that allow them to operate, a process known as accreditation. These are changes that take years of work and include getting approval from district boards, state officials and federal agencies. Adapting financial aid policies is particularly cumbersome, but Long, president of the Competency-Based Education Network, said if the eight colleges can succeed, they’ll be the first two-year institutions in the country to do it.

If the state’s community colleges can’t adapt to the competency-model of no lectures or grades, other schools will beat them to it, said Lowe, an executive vice chancellor with the community college system. She pointed to “for-profits” as the primary competitor.

At Shasta College, Tanner said the pilot program offered an opportunity to train students as the state ramps up its plans to offer free transitional kindergarten, which is a year of school offered to any 4-year old before kindergarten. California will need  by 2025-26 to teach transitional kindergarten.

State law sets requirements for transitional kindergarten teachers, such as taking 24 units of early education college classes or having comparable professional experience. For those who already have some background in early childhood education, but not enough to meet the requirements, the new course model could allow them to “quickly demonstrate that they know their stuff,” Tanner said. 

Unions, faculty leaders voice concern

The success of the pilot depends on the support of the faculty.

“Take a look at teacher load, teacher contracts — that’s all connected to time in the classroom, lecture hours. This whole framework is going to have to break or change and nobody really knows how to go about doing that,” said Elizabeth Waterbury, a music instructor and the faculty association president at Shasta College. 

While she supports the idea, she’s concerned about what the new system could do to faculty pay. 

“I’m afraid we may be the ones who could make it more difficult for California to transition to competency-based education,” she said.

Tanner and her colleagues haven’t yet tried to sell the faculty union on the pilot. Instead, they plan to ask faculty involved in the pilot program to track their time so that the college first understands the workload.

Last fall, faculty leaders from the Madera Community College Academic Senate expressed concerns about the ways this new model might impact their pay and intellectual property, college president Reyna said. The development of the new program has been on “pause” ever since, he said. 

On Aug. 25, the Madera Community College Academic Senate issued saying it was “deeply concerned” about the direction of the pilot program and asked the college to “reconsider” participating. However, the former president of the academic senate, Brad Millar,  on March 7, 2021, when the college submitted its application to join the pilot. 

But in its resolution, the academic senate said anyone who signed the application on behalf of the group never sought approval from its members. When the members of the academic senate did discuss the program on Nov. 18, 2022, it “failed to garner support,” according to the resolution.

“In concept, there are many benefits,” Bill Turini, president of the Madera Community College Academic Senate, told CalMatters. One potential concern is that the model could lead to less qualified teachers in some instances, he said. He said the program is “still an abstraction” but pointed to other, simpler changes that he said yield similar results, such as more online instruction and flexible start dates.

Madera Community College is the newest community college in the state, officially recognized in 2020. It is part of a large district that includes Fresno City College, Clovis Community College, and Reedley College. None of the other schools in the district are participating in the pilot. 

“Any policy that we want to change at Madera Community College to accommodate competency-based education, it impacts the three other colleges,” Reyna said. 

East Los Angeles College is the only college participating in the pilot among a nine-college district. It’s the largest community college district in the nation. It’s been slow to implement some of the changes required by the pilot program, but success there could make it easier for other colleges in the district to follow.

“When you talk to faculty who’ve been here longer than 10 years and their picture of an East Los Angeles College student, they envision a 20-year-old student taking 15 units (full-time) at the Monterey Park campus. We’ve now grown to an older student population,” said Leticia Barajas, a faculty member and president of the college’s academic senate. “This is about institutional transformative change.”

This story was produced with support from the Education Writers Association’s Reporting Fellowship program. Adam Echelman covers California’s community colleges in partnership with Open Campus, a nonprofit newsroom focused on higher education.

Des Moines Area Community College is a harder target for cyberattacks and scams than it used to be, President Rob Denson said, but it takes constant effort and vigilance to stay that way.

He and his staff will receive fake attachments, fraudulent messages from people claiming to be coworkers and applicants with intentions of taking financial aid and running rather than attending classes almost every day, despite best efforts to head them off.

“Threat actors are always looking for you to let down your guard,” he said.

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In efforts to keep campus safe, some Iowa community colleges are having to put increasingly more time, manpower and money toward cybersecurity efforts.

Aaron Warner, CEO of cybersecurity company ProCircular, said community colleges are targets for bad actors because they house a lot of sensitive information, their student populations see continuous turnover, and they’re made to be as accessible as possible.

The often-chaotic time just before school starts is also utilized by cybercriminals, as faculty and staff are busier and less likely to catch suspicious emails or other activities.

“It’s an unfortunate byproduct of the fact that they’re a community organization,” Warner said. “They are designed to interact as best as possible with the community. Bad guys take advantage of that.”

When the COVID-19 pandemic forced employees to work from home, Warner said the opportunities to conduct cyberattacks expanded. Gone was the castle-and-moat style of keeping sensitive information on one secure network as data was transferred onto home computers and laptops. The risk of a successful cyberattack or intrusion didn’t so much rise as become more distributed, he said.

DMACC and Iowa Central Community College have already faced in real time what ProCircular simulates for training — a breach in cybersecurity. Iowa Central Community College was hacked in 2018, and DMACC saw a breach in 2021.

Both colleges amped up security efforts in response, which they still keep up today.

Colleges work to stop ‘ghost student’ scam

One problem DMACC has worked to curb is “ghost students,” or applicants who use fake or stolen identities to seek financial aid. Denson said the college started seeing more fraudulent applications around two years ago, coming in groups from certain areas in different states and filing for loans without any intent of actually attending classes.

For around a year, DMACC staff have been calling every applicant to confirm their identity before putting their information into the system, Denson said. While this practice has cut down on ghost student applications, it’s not the easiest task to undertake.

In fall 2022, DMACC admitted more than 1,600 full-time, first-time students. Admissions staff and recruiters called each applicant and recorded the confirmation of their identity in the DMACC system — a time-consuming process, Denson said, as many students aren’t easy to reach over phone or email.

“It’s a terrible use of time, it’s not the best use of their skills, but it’s something we’ve got to do,” Denson said. “What we don’t want to do is get a fraudulent app inside of our learning management system.”

At its peak in late July 2022, Denson said the college was receiving around 15 fraudulent applications a day. Since implementing this practice, Denson said that number has decreased significantly, but one or two a day still pop up.

Denson said the amount of time and manpower needed to verify so many applicants pulls people away from their other work.

“We would rather have recruiters out recruiting and advisors talking to students about their career, rather than verifying somebody’s identity,” he said.

In order to lower the risk of a fake student infiltrating Iowa Central Community College’s systems, President Jesse Ulrich said staff purges all records of inactive students — those who applied but never signed up for classes or interacted with the college in any way — every semester.

Cybersecurity is costly

Staff and faculty at both community colleges receive training on how to spot and report phishing, and receive random test phishing emails. Iowa Central Community College has members of its IT team dedicated to servers and infrastructure, and DMACC has a cybersecurity expert on retainer.

Security software, training and insurance all require funds, Ulrich said, which could be used in other areas of the college.

“Anytime you are putting more resources into cybersecurity, whether that’s through people, software, paying more for insurance; all of those things pull from the general fund or other areas of our funds to be able to really meet the core purpose of community colleges,” Ulrich said.

Both colleges have cyber insurance; Denson said the college’s annual insurance cost is five times what it was, and the deductible has doubled.

Even divulging details on its cybersecurity insurance could put the college at risk, Ulrich said, as threat actors will look through public records to determine how well-insured schools are and use that in attacks.

“It’s kind of a lose-lose situation for higher ed when we’re put in that situation,” he said.

However, having these safeguards isn’t really a choice, Denson said — it’s a necessity, and one that isn’t going away soon.

According to SonicWall’s 2023 , educational institutions were cyber criminal’s top targets for malware attacks. At the recent annual Community Colleges for Iowa conference, Ulrich said cybersecurity was among the top 10 challenges facing higher education today.

ProCircular works with more than just community colleges to evaluate cybersecurity efforts, but the leaders at colleges Warner has met are among the most understanding of the issues and how to tackle them, he said. Much of the company’s training involves ensuring people know what to look for, how to respond in the event of a breach and helping them allocate resources in the right areas.

U.S. Rep. Zach Nunn introduced in April to help curb cyber attacks against K-12 schools by increasing available resources, expanding cyber attack prevention information sharing and improve national tracking of cyber attacks. While no bills targeting cybersecurity in higher education have been introduced, a spokesperson for Nunn’s office said they are working with as many entities as possible to help tighten cybersecurity across the board.

Community Colleges for Iowa Executive Director Emily Shields said there has been interest in the state Legislature in working to curb cybersecurity breaches in higher education, but many of the best practices suggested in discussions are already being practiced by community colleges.

When it comes to funding, Shields said colleges would rather see more dollars go into general funds than specific silos like cybersecurity, as it allows them to be more flexible in allocating resources.

The organization has worked to help keep colleges informed about cybersecurity threats and avenues to help fend off attacks, in the event one does occur, she said.

“The conversation always is not if this is going to happen in your college, it’s when,” Shields said. “Everybody’s anticipating. You will have cyberattacks, probably plural — it’s making sure you’re ready for that.”

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Iowa Capital Dispatch maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Kathie Obradovich for questions: info@iowacapitaldispatch.com. Follow Iowa Capital Dispatch on and .

From 2011 to 2019, Black enrollment declined at twice the rate (26%) of the overall decrease at two-year colleges (13%), a drop of almost 300,000 students. In 2020, Black enrollment plunged by another 100,000, a return to the same levels as 20 years ago. This threatens “decades of gains in Black economic opportunity through college enrollment,” according to the , prepared for the , a coalition of 26 higher education executives, academics and national leaders assembled in response to this alarming trend. 

Not only does this promote inequitable opportunity for Black learners; it also comes at significant economic cost to Black families and the nation. Brookings Institution data suggest that downward mobility affects — a racial wealth gap that McKinsey & Co. could “cost the U.S. economy between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion between 2019 and 2028 — 4% to 6% of the projected [gross domestic product] in 2028.”

Ensuring Black learner success is not solely about economics. It requires a commitment to redesigning structures and systems that many Black Americans encounter as barriers to economic and social mobility. 

In recent years, community colleges have worked to introduce comprehensive supports inside and outside the classroom that help individual students access certificates, degrees and employment. They changed placement-test policies and accelerated transitions into college-level math and English courses. They implemented broad changes to strengthen advising, providing ongoing individual academic and nonacademic counseling when students need it, and created more agile financial aid policies, including emergency assistance. Additionally, community colleges have found resources for food banks and assistance to help students find housing and, in some cases, pay their rent, as poverty disproportionately impacts Black communities. In fact, according to a from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, “an alarming 70% of Black students experienced food or housing insecurity or homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

However, this work needs to be coupled with a new strategy to bolster access for Black learners, many of whom no longer see higher education as a viable pathway. The strategy must begin by recognizing the fact that many Black college students perceive that they are not welcome. A recent found that Black students “are not only more likely to say they frequently or occasionally feel discriminated against, but also to say they feel disrespected and physically or psychologically unsafe.”

To reach and support them, colleges must understand students’ experiences and the strengths and challenges of their local communities; present learning content that is relevant to their lives and cultural backgrounds; encourage students to take on inquiry-based assignments and projects that reflect their interests; and eliminate barriers to their success. This requires a student-centered approach to ensure that Black learners have what they need to enter and succeed in college.

This means that schools must:

• Transform existing notions of access from open doors that students can enter to lifelong career-matching institutions for students and the communities they serve. That means looking beyond traditional recruitment strategies and providing working adults who never previously considered higher education with credentialing and degree programs that help them secure living-wage jobs. It also means partnering with high schools to bridge the gap for students who are disconnected and disengaged.
  
• Redesign dual enrollment and other college-in-high-school programs to more effectively reach Black learners. Programs such as dual enrollment, early college and joint career and technical education are increasingly important pathways. Nearly 1 in 5 community college students are enrolled through programs, which have significant potential to improve academic success. But racial inequities limit the availability of these programs to students of color and those from low-income families. The reports that, “[F]our out of every five school districts have racial equity gaps in access” to dual enrollment.

• Eliminate financial barriers by creating real transparency about the cost of college and strengthen policies that can help Black learners. As the ,“the vast majority — 80% — of Black Americans believe that college is unaffordable.” This is not surprising given that Black families have fewer assets to pay for college and, as a result, incur significantly more student loan debt than their white or Latino peers. This is true even at the community college level. Only one-third of Black students are able to earn an associate degree without incurring debt. One promising pathway would be to expand College Promise programs, which can have on Black enrollment.
  
• Ensure that Black students have multiple pathways to attaining a credential that leads to upwardly mobile careers — and are not steered into , as research suggests happens at many community colleges.

It is time for colleges, states and the nation to commit to providing Black students with postsecondary opportunities that lead to life-sustaining jobs and economically mobile careers, and support the vitality of the communities where these students and families live. The alternative is far too costly for Black Americans and the nation.

Enrollment trends for community colleges in North Carolina and nationally are headed in the right direction, but in most cases colleges have not caught up to pre-pandemic levels – much less pre-Great Recession numbers.

State funding is largely tied to enrollment, so it is a trend colleges can’t afford not to watch.

The budget full-time equivalent (FTE) – how the NCCCS is funded for enrollment – is up 1.7% this year, but also down from pre-pandemic levels. The number of students served across the (NCCCS), known as headcount, , but is down 10% from fall 2019. Both trends impact students and colleges alike.

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“Increasing enrollment is probably one of the that we’re hearing about from community college presidents, trustees, and administrators,” Patrick Crane, vice president of strategic initiatives at the system office, “…We know that there are already significant attainment gaps, educational attainment gaps, by race, ethnicity, and by county across the state. And so not addressing this just continues to widen those gaps as well.”

Many variables impact enrollment, including shifting labor trends, and population shifts, barriers to retaining students, and more. NCCCS leaders say solutions require being intentional, serving historically underserved populations, and thinking beyond a one-size-fits-all approach.

“Reversing the decade-long decline in community college enrollment is the highest priority for our system,” Burr Sullivan, chair of the State Board of Community Colleges, said

This article takes a look at enrollments trends, the ways FTE is counted and why that matters, along with headcount data and why we need to be thinking more about the total number of students served – and how that relates to investment in community colleges.

History of enrollment trends

While the pandemic exacerbated enrollment declines, it did not create them. Enrollment has been trending down since it peaked during the Great Recession in 2010-11.

Many higher education institutions across the country have seen enrollment declines over the last decade, though the pandemic.

Enrollment declines at our community colleges also largely map with population declines, according to Bill Schneider, NCCCS associate vice president of research and performance management.

In December 2021, he told the State Board that 46 of the 58 colleges had.

Counties with declining populations generally experience enrollment and FTE declines, Schneider said, while counties with population growth tend to see enrollment growth.

With this reality in mind, Schneider said it’s likely more rural colleges will continue to see declining enrollments compared to urban colleges – which would, in turn, result in less funding.

At the same time, many rural community colleges serve a critical role as one of the only postsecondary institutions in their communities.

That role includes training the early child care workforce, training first responders, training the health care workforce, creating opportunities for students in high school through early college and Career and College Promise, providing customized training for industry, imagining the future of work, providing local leadership, and more. It is not clear what community colleges in the face of enrollment funding declines.

Enrollment determines funding, staffing, and more

Enrollment in community colleges is one of the simplest ways the system and the state can assess its success in meeting its open-door mission to students across North Carolina.

As EdNC has :

Declining enrollment at our state’s community colleges is problematic for the state as a whole. Growing economies require an educated population, and a robust community college system expands the number of residents able to get an education. 

Understanding this is crucial in the management and evaluation of the community college system. Not only does enrollment signal the demand for education in our state, but it also has significant ramifications for how community colleges are funded, staffed, and measured for success.

Enrollment at community college is broken into three main categories: curriculum, continuing education, and basic skills courses. 

Students do not take a uniform number of classes, and classes can be worth a variety of credits. So universities have developed a unit of measure called full-time equivalent, or FTE, that uses a set number of credits to define a full-time student rather than rely on a traditional headcount. This allows colleges to look at their student body in the aggregate for budget and planning purposes. In plain terms, it allows the college to count multiple part-time students as one full-time student based on the number of credits taken. The state then bases funding on the number of full-time equivalents.

Currently, one FTE is equivalent to 512 hours of instruction.

Many feel that funding based on FTEs, not actual students, misses many of the costs associated with part-time students, such as career counseling, tutoring, mental health, and other wrap around services.

Colleges must provide the same support for students, whether they are taking one course or they are full-time students.

What is happening nationally?

Nationally, community college enrollment is starting to grow this spring (+2.1%), according to February 2023 from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

That growth is largely fueled by increased enrollment among dual enrollees (age 17 and under) and freshmen, the report says. The growth is taking place at community colleges in cities, suburbs, and rural regions, unlike trends across four-year institutions reflecting rural declines.

This research is based on unweighted enrollment counts to emphasize year-over-year changes in enrollment patterns, rather than estimating total enrollment numbers.

Trends in FTE in North Carolina

It is important to note the difference between actual FTE, budget FTE, and instructional FTE.

Actual FTE reflects instruction shared between colleges and also adjusts for errors in previous term reporting. To see actual FTE data, start . Once actual is clicked at the bottom of that page, you can then click on the tabs throughout the dashboard to see the data.

Budget FTE reflects the number of FTE for which colleges are funded through state funding formulas. To see budget FTE data, start . Once budget is clicked at the bottom of that page, you can then click on the tabs throughout the dashboard to see the data.

This year, the NCCCS estimated an overall 1.7% increase for fall 2023 in budget full-time equivalent (FTE) – also included in Gov. Roy Cooper’s recommended budget and the proposed Republican House budget.

That 1.7% increase represents an additional 3,800 FTE, NCCCS Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Brandy Andrews .

“While the basic skills instruction shows the highest percent increase, I would like to call your attention to the workforce continuing education increase of almost 1,600 FTE,” Andrews said. “This shows our colleges are working hard delivering programs for students to meet workforce needs.”

is the dashboard for instructional FTE data. You can select to see system or college data, the reporting time frame (terms or years), and more.

Thirty-eight N.C. community colleges saw growth in their from fall 2021 to fall 2022.

In comparison, only 11 colleges have seen increases in instructional FTE since before the pandemic in fall 2019. NCCCS instructional FTE is down 7% overall since then.

One of those schools – – is a sizable outlier, with a 44% increase in FTE since fall 2019. President Jay Carraway said he believes one reason for the continued growth is how intentional the college has been about recruiting and marketing.

“There’s a lot that goes into recruiting and retaining students… We are very intentional about what we do and how we do it,” Carraway told EdNC. “From the time you drive off the state road, and you come onto our campus, you begin to see that we pay attention to detail.”

At , President Maria Pharr credits the school’s success in enrolling more students to “a new approach to education” – . The Learning Reimagined program aims to increase access, remove barriers, and provide flexibility to meet diverse student needs by expanding learning options like HyFlex, adopting an online textbook model, and creating several short-term credentials, among other things.

“After the pandemic and recent economic challenges, many people have been re-prioritizing their careers and goals, and many turned to higher education to make their new goals a reality,” Pharr told EdNC. “At South Piedmont Community College, we’ve been able to meet that changing demand through investments in technologies and the willingness to meet the contemporary needs of our students.”

A look at headcount data

Headcount data is unduplicated within the time period, within individual colleges, and within the system. is the dashboard.

Approximately 574,378 students were enrolled in the system over 2021-22, which you can find by selecting the “2021-22 reporting year” option on the dashboard.

To get more recent data, you need to compare enrollment year-over-year by term. Data from groups like the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center typically report on enrollment trends using headcount data.

The number of students served across the NCCCS increased 3% from fall 2021 to fall 2022,, with 377,462 students enrolled in at least one class last semester. That’s a 10% decrease from before the pandemic, in fall 2019, or 44,000 fewer students.

Across the system, only five colleges have seen, pre-pandemic enrollment: (5%), (5%), (4%), (2%), (0% but 19 students).

Each of the other 53 community colleges have seen decreases in headcount since fall 2019, ranging from 1% all the way to 34%.

Enrollment of adult learners on the rise

The investments being made in adult learners help us see why headcount matters.

The number of adult learners enrolled in N.C. community colleges increased by 10% since the system launched its two adult learner pilot programs, according to a . The enrollment of adult learners saw particularly strong growth in short-term workforce and continuing education courses, the release said.

North Carolina has two adult learner pilot programs, N.C. Reconnect and REACH, to reach students 25 and older at 29 participating colleges. The initiatives focus particularly on older students who have received some college credits previously, but have not graduated.

From 2020-2022, adult learner enrollment increased

The largest enrollment growth took place in workforce and continuing education courses, increasing 19% in the same time period. Those short-term courses are designed to provide individuals the skills and credentials needed to gain fast employment in high-demand industries. Additionally, adult basic skills increased by 37%.

Roughly half of North Carolina community college students are adult learners, and 58% were employed full time while taking college courses in fall 2022, the release said.

However you count it, who is not enrolled?

Nationwide, than in spring 2020, an enrollment decline nearly double that of female students.

At N.C. community colleges, , with enrollment declining 21% from fall 2019 to fall 2020 for this group. There were still about 10,000 fewer Black men enrolled across the NCCCS last fall from before the pandemic.

Community colleges enroll some of the most , including in North Carolina. That means at least part of the solution to enrollment declines must include colleges meeting diverse student needs.

“They are 16 years old and they’re 73 years old and they’re everything in between,” Janet Spriggs, president of told EdNC last August regarding community college students. “They are working parents, single mothers, and they’re facing all kinds of life circumstances that most people don’t recognize.”

Many NCCCS leaders say their colleges are enrolling more part-time students, and that it often takes more resources to support part-time students. At the same time, colleges must enroll more part-time students to receive the same budgeted FTE as for full-time students.

In recent years, North Carolina community colleges have increasingly added support – part- and full-time alike.

Over students did not return to college their second year, according to data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center (NSCRC).

Retention and enrollment must go hand in hand, according to President Scott Ralls. Wake Tech – the system’s largest campus – has seen a 10% decrease in the number of students enrolled as of fall 2022 compared to before the pandemic.

“If you’re interested, as we have been in the community colleges for years, in student success, student success comes through completion. And retention is about completion,” Ralls previously told EdNC. “So the enrollment battle — much more of it is about how you retain students than it is about just recruiting new students. You can’t get to your completion goals without retention, and you can’t get to your enrollment goals without retention either.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

, R-Gaston, told staff from the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI) that he wants to know when efforts to get elementary students on reading level will be successful.

“Tell me that, and I’ll be satisfied,” he said.

Deputy State Superintendent Michael Maher said that was a hard question to answer on the spot.

“That’s a great question,” he said. “I think that’s one we’ll have to get back to you on.”

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The question came during a meeting of the that heard presentations on reading, along with a number of other topics, on Nov. 29.

The presentation from DPI was on the , a law that was updated in 2021 to emphasize the use of the science of reading to ensure students in elementary schools can read on grade level by grade three.

The “science of reading” refers to a body of research conducted by reading experts, especially cognitive scientists, on how we learn to read and how we read to learn. According to DPI, it is “evidence-based reading instruction practices that address the acquisition of language, phonological and phonemic awareness, phonics and spelling, fluency, vocabulary, oral language, and comprehension that can be differentiated to meet the needs of individual students.”

The data was previously presented and discussed at the and shows gains in literacy since the heart of the pandemic, though students remain behind where they were before the pandemic.

Torbett went on to say that efforts to teach students to read in North Carolina are not new.

“We’ve been talking this for a long long time … I want some assurity … about when do you see a proficient reading at the end of third grade for our kids in North Carolina?” he asked. “If not, then it’s just talk.”

Maher explained that efforts to train teachers in the science of reading are still in early phases. The 2022-23 school year is the first year , according to DPI. Maher said it is likely that results from these efforts will be known when students now in kindergarten reach third grade.

The presentation was just one legislators heard in this meeting, which is coming ahead of the start of the long session in January. Next year’s session will also include the creation of the next two-year budget for the state.

See the full presentation

Schools That Lead

Julie Marks, the director of program evaluation and a senior research associate with the (EPIC), presented an evaluation on

The program came from a 2018 directive from lawmakers that required DPI to contract with Schools That Lead to provide professional development to teachers and administrators in up to 60 schools.

The program’s professional development model focuses, in part, on reducing “early-warning indicators” in elementary schools, reducing the number of ninth graders who are held back, and increasing on-time graduation. The program aims to do this by teaching educators how to design and implement improvement strategies in their schools.

The work in schools was done on a three-year timeline with the aim of ultimately improving student performance.

In all, the program reached 52 schools in 15 districts and charter schools, impacting 30,000 students, most of whom were experiencing poverty.

A case study was given to illustrate how the process works. For instance, a teacher looked at the problem, which was students failing a course. She looked at the data and saw that students had zeros on many assignments, and then she gave students a tool to track the completion of their work. All students subsequently improved their grade, with most bringing their grade up to passing.

The evaluation found an increase in knowledge among educators about “improvement science,” the process the program teaches to help improve situations in schools. It also found that the program gave educators the tools to try to address “barriers to student success.”

The evaluation found that students in schools participating in the program showed marked improvement in both graduation rates and chronic absenteeism.

on Schools That Lead showed the effectiveness of the organization’s approach when it comes to putting students on watch lists if they show early warning indicators.

Marks said that “Schools That Lead is something unique and different,” and ended her presentation with the following quote.

See the presentation on the evaluation

N.C. Promise

Lawmakers also heard about the, which provides dramatically reduced tuition for students at specific universities in the University of North Carolina System.

The program began in 2018 with Elizabeth City State University, the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, and Western Carolina University. Fayetteville State University will start in the program this fall.

N.C. Promise sets tuition for resident students at $500 a year and tuition for out-of-state students at $2,500.

The following graphic shows changes in enrollment for the colleges over time, taking into account that the COVID-19 pandemic impacted interest for reasons that couldn’t be controlled.

A on Fayetteville State University shows how its inclusion in the program is already showing results for this fall’s attendance.

See the N.C. Promise presentation

Community college organizational assessment and climate survey

Finally, lawmakers heard about an organizational assessment and a climate survey of the community college system, something

Part of the findings of the organizational assessment included challenges facing the community college system.

Burr Sullivan, chair of the State Board of Community Colleges, noted the issues raised by these studies.

“We have some more work to do, but we are on the right track,” he said.

He also noted that he presented the findings to Bill Carver, interim president of the community college system, when he stepped into the role in July for the second time in his lifetime.

While the system continues to search for a permanent new president, Sullivan said the work on making changes based on the findings has to start now.

“The issues that have come out of these surveys can’t wait for the next permanent president,” he said.

See that presentation

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

North Carolina’s 58 community colleges have traditionally competed in some ways with one another for students — and the resulting .

But as and colleges emphasize the need for accessible student services, among other reasons, that competitive relationship is increasingly shifting to a formally collaborative one.

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“Exemplary institutions have kind of taken the onus on themselves to become not only providers for students, but also to be able to serve as a convener and a problem solver for the region and for their community,” said Tess Henthorne, senior program manager at the

On a national scale, Henthorne sees these collaborations taking place to develop talented workers and higher-paying jobs in a region.

Such collaborations pay dividends for students, she said, but not necessarily for the colleges themselves.

“It just takes a lot more work on the part of the college to take that step and have that mindset shift,” Henthorne said. “Because community colleges aren’t necessarily incentivized through their funding structures to do that work.”

RTP Bio

In North Carolina, a new workforce development collaboration between and recently secured .

That partnership, RTP Bio, is an effort between the two colleges to unite their .

BIG NEWS: $1.2 million in federal funding is headed to NC-04 for the RTP Bio Workforce Development Project!

This collab between & will provide the skills training necessary to connect students w/ quality jobs in the rapidly growing biotechnology sector.

— Rep. David E. Price (@RepDavidEPrice)

With some overlapping geographical boundaries, Wake Tech and Durham Tech often compete to attract students. Now, the colleges will work together to connect students to regional biotech employers. The Research Triangle Park is the country’s fifth largest biotechnology hub, according to a .

“Collaborations like this — when there’s a lot of synergy, as in this case because of our institutions and because of our connections to Research Triangle Park — make everybody stronger,” Wake Tech President Scott Ralls said. “There are things that each of our institutions have and somewhat focus on that the other doesn’t have, and may not need to have as the other one’s putting a focus there. We can collectively support each other in what is this huge sector of our economy that’s so relevant in the two areas.”

In addition to resources from each school, the RTP Bio announcement listed an annual commitment of $40,000 from North Carolina pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly to support the program. Lilly recently broke ground on a $474 million pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Durham County. The company’s annual pledge will go toward resources, student scholarships, and faculty development, according to the colleges.

The collaboration’s goal is to attract more potential biopharma students and address growing employment needs in the RTP’s life sciences. In 2020, more than 11,000 biotechnology jobs were created in the RTP, according to

The initiative’s joint programs include associate degree transfer arrangements, the delivery of short-term and customized workforce training, and apprenticeships. Additionally, RTP Bio will create new life sciences pathways for high schoolers and support biotechnology-related career development across the counties served by the two colleges. Under the partnership, the colleges also plan to share building and faculty resources.

“Between our students and the employers in this area, county boundaries and college service areas don’t mean a whole lot — certainly not like they mean to the community colleges,” Durham Tech President J.B. Buxton said. “As employers and potential employees are working all around the greater Triangle region, we really need to come together to provide those pathways. And we’re going to do a better job at meeting that demand together than to try to serve them separately.”

‘The importance of regional collaboration’

While the history of collaboration between community colleges is not new, such a concerted financial partnership to build programming is unique.

“Well, we’ve seen it on the transfer side, for sure,” Aspen Institute Vice President Josh Wyner told EdNC regarding pathways for students to transfer from a two-year to four-year school. Wyner is also the founder and executive director of the institute’s college excellence program.

“The challenge that we see is that the capacity of different community colleges to be nimble in delivering these workforce credentials varies so dramatically, that the chances two colleges will be able to deliver the same quality in the same place is somewhat limited,” he said. “Colleges are not designed very well either to cede authority over curriculum development and standards for the program to somebody else, and those that have developed the best workforce programs are not incentivized to share those with anybody else. Nor is there a mechanism for them to do that — so you see it sporadically.”

Aspen Institute Vice President Josh Wyner

RTP Bio is one of the most significant collaborations between N.C. community colleges, according to college leaders involved in the program, but others exist.

Last week, The Golden LEAF Board of Directors awarded (CCCC) nearly $500,000 for a regional truck driving and logistics program. That program – a collaborative effort between Central Carolina, , and community colleges – will provide commercial truck driver and short-term logistics courses and serve Chatham, Harnett, Hoke, Lee, Moore, and Randolph counties. The project uses a scaled shared-resources model to incentivize the collaboration.

“Golden LEAF recognizes the importance of regional collaboration to provide cost-effective workforce solutions for skills in high demand by industry,” said Scott Hamilton, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Golden LEAF Foundation. “This effort by Central Carolina Community College, Sandhills Community College, and Randolph Community College will support industry by training a minimum of 60 students for transportation and logistics credentials per year.”

The foundation also recently supported students seeking a commercial driver license (CDL) at a training program in western N.C.

’s (CCC&TI) truck driver training program has operated since 1990 — when it started with one truck and a handful of students. Now, the program has 90-plus pieces of equipment, and in the last decade, more than 2,000 CDL drivers graduated from the program.

CCC&TI’s truck driving course is offered throughout the year at multiple locations, . The class is taught at nine counties and eight other community colleges: , , , , , Isothermal, Halifax, and community colleges.

Last spring, the joint program at (HCC) certified 10 CDL students.

“Community colleges are not only economic drivers in a community but they also are institutions that can change people’s lives quickly,” said David Forester, HCC acting president and vice president of administrative services/CFO, in a release from the college. “The CDL program serves as a great reminder of the dramatic benefits of short-term training improving the lives of students.”

‘This is really the future’

Last October, (MTCC), (ICC), Foothills Workforce Development Board, and Centro Unido Latino Americano launched another large collaborative workforce development initiative.

, funded by a $1.498 million grant from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Workforce Opportunities in Rural Communities (WORC) program, recruits and serves economically disadvantaged individuals. The grant allocated funds at both community colleges to add high-tech instructional simulation equipment in health care, manufacturing, and construction trades programs. The colleges could add work-based learning staff to create on-the-job training opportunities for students.

Nonprofit Centro Unido Latino Americano is helping connect Hispanic communities with training and education offered by both colleges. The nonprofit also received funding to hire a Latino Workforce Coordinator to recruit individuals to English language acquisition classes and high school equivalency and career training opportunities.

“We are excited about the opportunities this will create in our communities,” ICC President Margaret Annunziata said last October. “We are appreciative of all of the partners involved and of the supportive vision of the Department of Labor for helping us realize this possibility.”

During recent N.C. State Board of Community Colleges meetings, Board members discussed creating and funding similar student support positions. In such cases, those employees would serve multiple community colleges in a region.

At , North Carolina Community College System President Thomas Stith said he wants to encourage regional partnerships. Board Chair Burr Sullivan emphasized incentivizing financial collaboration, so that one college doesn’t shoulder the burden of a partnership. He cited CCC&TI’s contributions to the truck driver program as an example.

At Durham Tech, Buxton said a foundation of cooperation between campuses will be crucial in expanding to more formal partnerships.

Ralls said RTP Bio is a “more focused step” between Durham and Wake Tech to address workforce development. Still, he said, a previously existing economic ecosystem in the region is what made the initiative possible.

Both presidents are proud of what RTP Bio will add for their students and communities. They also hope the partnerships between community colleges across the state will continue to grow and receive necessary support.

“This is really the future of what will become normal for how we address workforce opportunities that span county boundaries,” Buxton said. “Whether it’s Durham Tech with Wake Tech or it’s Durham Tech with and … this kind of collaborative approach to how we make sure that people in our backyard have access to jobs across a region is where we’re all trying to move, and I think that’s very exciting for the people in our communities.”

This first appeared on and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Before the pandemic, almost two-thirds of Latino and more than half of Black graduates from the Los Angeles Unified School District were completing the series of 15 courses required by both the University of California and California State University systems. In 2020, the rate fell to 54 percent for Latino students and 46 percent for Black students.

First-time enrollment in Los Angeles’s community colleges also saw a sharp decline — another indicator of the pandemic’s impact on students’ post-secondary plans.

“We can’t allow the pandemic to let us go backwards,” said Audrey Dow, senior vice president of the Los Angeles office for the Campaign for College Opportunity, which produced the report. “We all know that a bachelor’s degree, a college credential, is the new entry level into work.”

The district’s overall graduation rate reached 82 percent last school year, but that doesn’t mean students are well-prepared for college. The authors of the report commend the district for requiring students to take math, English and other courses needed for college admission in order to graduate. But they urge leaders to take the next step by requiring higher grades in those courses to get a diploma — a C instead of a D.

The findings contribute to the many challenges facing Alberto Carvalho as he prepares to take over as superintendent of the predominantly-Latino Los Angeles district on Monday. 

“Los Angeles is ripe, is primed for rampant and rapid expansion of advanced academic opportunities for the students,” Carvalho said Thursday during a virtual event honoring him for improving college enrollment in Miami-Dade County Public Schools, where he was chief for 14 years. He’s the first to win Superintendent of the Year from the , a nonprofit that brings courses from the nation’s top universities into high schools. 

The Los Angeles district already has two schools working with the organization, but Carvalho said he plans to “forcefully” expand the model throughout the district. He said he’d also like to expand dual enrollment programs and work closer with colleges and universities, as he did in Miami-Dade, to have college professors teach high school and high school students attend college courses. 

“If we simultaneously continue to lift the performance of Miami and we lift the performance of Los Angeles, America as a whole is elevated,” he said.

Carvalho’s track record in Miami — eliminating F schools in the district and increasing the graduation rate from less than 60 percent to 90 percent — is why the board recruited him and unanimously approved his contract, Jackie Goldberg, a member of the board, said last month when Carvalho was in town for his first school visit. 

“He struck some chords that just seemed to ring the bell,” she said. “We don’t vote 7-0 on much of anything.”

Carvalho is under pressure to combat trends that have only worsened during the pandemic. Those include reversing , narrowing persistent achievement gaps and, with over 18 percent of students chronically absent, increasing attendance. 

“He is inheriting a district that, quite frankly, parents have lost a lot of faith in,” said Jay Artis-Wright, executive director of Parent Revolution, an advocacy group that was involved in a lawsuit related to reopening and now wants the district to provide more tutoring and individualized academic support. “There is a disconnect between the [learning] loss and the recovery that’s supposed to be happening right now.”

High school students are on a shorter timeline to make up for lost instruction before applying for college. This year’s juniors, she said, were in ninth grade when schools closed for the pandemic and might have missed out on opportunities to learn about financial aid and which courses to take.

The pandemic also “forced kids to make tough choices,” added Elmer Roldan, executive director of Communities In Schools of Los Angeles, part of a nationwide nonprofit that focuses on keeping low-income students on track toward graduation and college. High school students “felt the financial burdens” of their families, sometimes forcing them to work, delay college or choose a trade school as an alternative, he said.

But he agrees with the report’s recommendation that the district should increase the graduation requirement from a D to a C in those classes. That would make them eligible for admission to one of nine University of California or 23 California State University campuses. 

“Now is the time, because there is money on the table” for counselors and other programs to help students prepare for college, Rodan said, adding that if there’s hesitation from teachers and administrators it’s because “you’re asking folks to raise the standards without providing additional resources.”

The class of 2016 was the first to be required to complete the classes for graduation. The Los Angeles school board set a goal of 75 percent of graduates earning a C or higher in those courses by 2026. But not requiring a C for graduation sends students the wrong message, Dow said.

“The whole impetus behind the policy change was so they could have a shot” at the UC or CSU systems, Dow said. “They are not going to be eligible applicants.”

According to the district, graduation requirements are not changing.

Raising the standard to a C is a worthy goal, said Ana Ponce of Great Public Schools Now, which funded the report. But she added that it could lead to a decline in graduation rates if too many students miss the C cutoff or “grade inflation” to ensure they make it.

Reforming remediation

While the report focuses on getting more students into four-year universities, data shows that almost half of the Los Angeles district’s Black and Latino students who enroll in higher education attend community college. And once enrolled, they’re often placed in remedial courses that don’t contribute toward a degree. Those in remedial classes are also less likely to transfer to a four-year school, .

In 2017, California passed a law to reduce the number of students in remedial courses. Community colleges must consider multiple factors throughout a student’s four years of high school, including grade point average, before deciding that the student is “highly unlikely” to pass a credit-bearing course. 

But the Los Angeles Community College District’s nine campuses “have been slow to adopt and implement” those reforms, according to the new report. Three of the schools have reduced the number of remedial courses available in English, thereby placing more first-year students in college-level courses. But none has taken similar steps in math, the report said.

Less than 10 percent of Black and Latino students earn a degree or certificate within three years of enrolling in a Los Angeles community college, the report finds, and they are far less likely than white students to transfer to a four-year university within four years — 13 percent compared to 46 percent. 

The report recommends community colleges place more students in transfer-eligible English and math courses during their first year.

One of Carvalho’s first steps, Dow said, should be forming a partnership with Francisco Rodriguez, the chancellor of the community college district, to address the report’s recommendations. 

Of the 28,047 Latino students who graduated in 2021, 17,352 completed the required courses, and of those, 14,125 enrolled in college, the report shows. 

“There has to be a focus from the district to ensure that students are enrolling in college,” Dow said. “What is happening to these students who aren’t going anywhere?”