31 Comments - Squib Kick - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:17 pm: Imagine for a moment if the community colleges were part of each public 4-year university’s official network. As in the president of the U of I would oversee the Chicago, Champaign and Springfield campuses, along with it’s network of community colleges. Rather than compete, it’s all part of a network of resources. - OenMan - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:21 pm: Voted yes, as long as the programs are up to the quality of other programs, I am good with this. - ElTacoBandito - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:26 pm: I agree with @OneMan about the quality of the programs. As long as the four-year degree doesn’t get muddled by a bunch of crap community college programs, this seems like a no brainer based on how college attendance and demographics have changed recently. - TJ - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:28 pm: Support. Making cc’s more flexible to the needs of their communities, including in providing an access to bachelor degrees, is a good thing. Schools like Eastern and Western having significant problems are a different problem that should likewise be adjusted, but this isn’t a negative impact on them and is instead an attempt to fix another issue. - JS Mill - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:32 pm: Add me to those who agree with Oneman. I would rather they focus on certification programs and get deeper depth there, and do it well. But this would be a value to those students that cannot afford room and board and are in rural areas. - Magic Dragon - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:33 pm: =Imagine for a moment if the community colleges were part of each public 4-year university’s official network. As in the president of the U of I would oversee the Chicago, Champaign and Springfield campuses, along with it’s network of community colleges. Rather than compete, it’s all part of a network of resources.= And costs would skyrocket, once again, making college unaffordable for many students. - Huh? - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:33 pm: As long as the programs are ABET accredited. - We've never had one before - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:33 pm: Support, only for the reason that if they are offering a four-year sheepskin, no one need worry again that the credits won’t transfer, they have to be up to par. - H-W - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:39 pm: I am in the minority, but not for the reason some might think. I am a professor at a four-year, public university. But it is not the further erosion of student population such a bill would allow that bothers me. Rather, I want to see the funding formulas. As it stands, community colleges rely extensively on local property taxes to fund their existence. If you increase the cost of faculties, then you must increase the income revenue stream. Tuition currently does not pay the cost of a community college education in full. The funding comes from three streams: state appropriations, tuition, and local taxes. As noted above, the “Restrictions” suggest tuition will not be allowed to offset higher costs of doing business for at least three or four years. So if tuition cannot account for growing expenditures, then either state appropriations must, or local taxes must. Until I see a serious presentation on the funding formula, then I am not convinced allowing community colleges to offer four-year degrees will not be associated with increasing property taxes and somewhat hefty state appropriation increases. Currently, we are projecting a very tight budget. This looks like “unanticipated” spending, to me. - Just Me 2 - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:48 pm: No. I’d prefer that community colleges focus on training and certification programs. - 47th Ward - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:48 pm: Community colleges have been lobbying for this for at least a decade. I think the Governor is responding to a real need, that there are people in need of higher education that won’t realistically set foot on the campus of a public four year. Rural Illinoisans and adults who want to complete a bachelor’s degree are examples. However, it’s not as easy as designing a degree and marketing it. CCs will need to hire additional faculty, particularly in the health sciences and in teacher education and pay them enough to move to rural CC towns. It’s not as if nursing faculty aren’t already scarce in Illinois, so finding faculty who are qualified isn’t going to be easy. Some CCs have existing faculty, but some don’t. By and large, Community Colleges are funded by local taxes, and there are some in the Chicago area that have relatively more local funding than those in rural communities. That discrepancy is likely one of several reasons the Governor is limiting this to a select group of CCs. I think Harper, College of DuPage, Joliet, Oakton and College of Lake County would love to get in on this. I hope they are excluded for the time being. While I have questions about whether this amounts to mission creep, and wondering whether this is good public policy, I’m willing to support it and see if it can work to address the needs of residents in rural communities. - Leap Day William - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 1:51 pm: I said this in the Just a Bill for today, but I’ll try to expand a bit here. I fully support this, with the stated restrictions, because there are needs that our four-year schools are not designed to meet. Community colleges offer the Associate of Arts (AA) and Associate of Sciences (AS) degrees, which are largely targeted to being pre-baccalaureate degrees that provide the direct pathways to BA and BS degrees in their respective programs. The courses taken are largely gen-eds but also several prerequisite courses many of the advanced 300/400 level courses offered at the state universities. This is what most people are familiar with when it comes to the community college to university pipeline. But what if that wasn’t how you started? What if you went the other route at community college? Community Colleges are also part trade schools who offer one-year Certificate programs and the two-year Associate of Applied Sciences degree (AAS, not to be confused with the Associates of Arts and Sciences degree offered in some places). The requirements for the AAD are the opposite: a few gen-eds to establish a baseline but largely targeted 100/200 level courses in a specialized trade/technical field. Classes here are are largely non-transferrable. The AAS is (in Illinois) a terminal degree for most programs. There’s nothing for you beyond that, except for a few 2+2 articulation agreements between some colleges and the directional universities, but almost all of those agreements are predicated on the student doing the traditional college thing: moving to Carbondale, Charleston, Macomb, Dekalb, etc. after finishing up the AAS for all but a handful of very specific fields and programs. Online education has definitely bridged the gap, and UIS has a lot of agreements in place The AAS programs are fantastic, and while they’re lower cost than four-year schools, they’re still part of higher education. That often gets lost in the discussions about student debt and loan forgiveness, but that’s a different subject but I can tell you that a lot of people. Anyway, staying on topic. Students who did the AAS route and want to change gears later in life don’t have a lot of options in Illinois outside of going back to school to get a BA/BS degree. Because the AAS is so trade/technical focused, it often requires going back and taking all of the gen-ed courses they didn’t get the first time around. While they hold a two-year degree, by transferrable credit they’re often a second-semester freshman with maybe 15 transferrable credits to their name and 45+ credits that look pretty on a transcript but don’t go anywhere. This means sitting down and taking the humanities, fine arts, psychology/sociology, math, communications, physical/life science courses they didn’t get before PLUS whatever pre-requisite courses for their major. At the end they’ll have paid for 120+ credit hours of classes at the community college level, with another 60 to go at the four-year college level. The completion rate for students who take this route is horrendously low, with many not even making it to the four-year school level and instead dropping out not because they can’t do the work, but because they’re working adults with all the trappings that come with. any don’t even start because they’re looking at doing it part-time and a student going the current pathway will be looking at what amounts to an additional 6-8 years of classes to go from their AAS to BA/BS degree. It’s not impossible, but that’s a whole lot of time and dedication working adults don’t always have but your average 18-23 year old does. My understanding is that the four-year degree programs going to be offered at community colleges are filling THIS gap; by creating Bachelors of Applied Science (BAS) programs to let student advance in those highly specific technical fields without having to start all over to go the BA/BS route, cutting the time in half and recognizing the credit earned for their technical degree. Right now, we’re losing those students who want to do this to out-of-state schools that offer these kind of technical degree completion programs, or we’re losing those students to them not even starting it in the first place or starting and having life get in the way. - Ole Professor - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 2:00 pm: Community colleges in Illinois have too many administrators, lack sufficient staffs, and balance the books on the backs of poorly paid adjunct lectures who earn a fraction of the tenured professors make. In order for Pritzker’s proposal to succeed, the colleges would require a major overhaul and would absolutely need to hire more full-time faculty members. - Benjamin - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 2:09 pm: I’m in favor, with reservations. I’m wary of mission creep at the community colleges, especially when we have excess capacity at state’s four-year institutions. I’d prefer to see the universities and community colleges work together to make sure credits transfer and clendars are aligned, and perhaps have universities offer select programs at or adjacent to the community colleges. I do know of some special circumstances like nursing–some community colleges offer a 2-year degree and want to offer a 4-year degree as well. That makes sense since the infrastructure is already in place. So I guess I’m in favor, though I feel the four-year degrees at community colleges should be the exception instead of the rule. - Politically_Illinois - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 2:16 pm: It seems nice enough so long as the offerings are accredited and of good quality. Remaking community colleges into adult continuing ed centers that offer everything from degrees to professional certificates to job training is a smart move. - Donnie Elgin - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 2:20 pm: I’m barely in the support camp. There is a part of me that sees this as creating a larger burden on taxpayers - CC’s are of course majority funded by local property taxes and tuition- so those costs could go up. And statewide we all pay for the public universities with income and other taxes. So I see duplication of service and inefficiency. The good part is that there will be more affordable higher education options that don’t require the cost of Room and Board with CC offering select 4-year degrees. It may also motivate the state to see the necessity of closing the failing public universities like EIU and WIU. - Hack in the Back - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 2:32 pm: What happens to the locally elected boards of trustees at each community college in determining degree offerings? These comm community colleges are funded partially by local property taxes. Will these local residents and taxpayers have any voice in the expansion of the colleges’ missions? - Our Joe - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 2:36 pm: H-W has hit the nail on the head. Some of these programs require significant investment, added faculty, and need to meet accreditation standards for their graduates to get jobs. Tuition will be restricted to 150% so that will mean more state aid or an increase in THE cCs property tax levy. The funding strategy will be key. - Jerry - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 2:36 pm: When I went back to school as an adult student I seem to recall the “Compact” agreement with most of the state schools (it has a different name now). Meaning if I took the classes on the state school list, and graduated with my degree from the community college, there was no looking back. I had to meet with an academic advisor to work through the logistics. I’m concerned about the cost, and thanks for bringing up the property tax issue in the comments. And yeah I agree Harper “like” community colleges need to be kept out of it, at least to start. I agree with the comments above from “47th ward” and “H-W”. With these thoughts in mind, I support it. - We’ll See - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 3:19 pm: I voted yes in part because I believe the community college system would offer a much better education than many of these private online “universities” / degree mills. - Montero - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 3:35 pm: Universities are already facing a demographic cliff, this will further exacerbate an enrollment problem faced by both community colleges and universities. There are no more additional students to fill the empty seats. There is a way to collaborate and create seamless pathways that will produce a quality education, including dual enrollment programs, co-admission, and degree pathways where students know exactly what courses to take and how much it will cost. Moreover, with online options students do not even need to leave their communities to complete a degree. It just requires that universities become more nimble and community colleges to align their curriculum. Let’s not compromise on quality, and let’s start using the existing infrastructure of space, faculty, and equipment. - ArchPundit - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 3:57 pm: ===The AAS programs are fantastic, and while they’re lower cost than four-year schools, they’re still part of higher education. That often gets lost in the discussions about student debt and loan forgiveness, but that’s a different subject but I can tell you that a lot of people. Exactly. Trade school is vernacular, and CTE programs are now higher education. —My understanding is that the four-year degree programs going to be offered at community colleges are filling THIS gap; by creating Bachelors of Applied Science (BAS) programs to let student advance in those highly specific technical fields without having to start all over to go the BA/BS route, This is where I think there is value to students. For the traditional BA/BS pathway there is nothing stopping community colleges from partnering with universities to offer four year degrees on their campuses. However, this portion of AAS to a BAS is not likely to be well served by universities. - Lurker - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 4:20 pm: I voted yes because I went to a Community College and then completed degrees at 4 year universities, and it would have been nice to save money on the undergraduate degree. But the more I think about it, I’m not too sure. Unless things have changed, my education at university was so much better than at community college for one simple reason, almost every teacher was a professor and not a substitute/adjunct professor. Whereas at CC, more than 50% were either local professionals subbing in or an adjunct professor. I’d suggest that be much more limited for a 4-year degree. - G'Kar - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 4:49 pm: As a retired Community College professor, I have mixed feeling about this and I did not vote. Most of my concerns are expressed eloquently by H-W in his post. I also agree with Leap Day William that a BAS degree would be beneficial. Until these two threads–needs v funding can be met, I’m on the fence. - Juvenal - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 4:55 pm: I am opposed. Squib Kick underscores what should be the role of community colleges: getting kids on track for a four year degree, or preparing them with career skills through a two-year program. Don’t get me wrong, I love Lewis & Clark. And Parkland. And Oakton. And Cook County Colleges. But Illinois faces huge gaps in meeting the demands of employers for jobs that do not require a four year degree, but do require some post high school training, and community colleges are failing to fullfill this core mission. Those same community colleges are already proving two-year programs to prepare kids for SIUE, U of I, NIU, and UIC btw. - Chicago Voter - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 5:14 pm: I voted no. The cost for this growth, and there will be significant cost, will fall on the residents of that community college district. The universities already have numerous partnerships and agreements. Could there be more or strengthen the ones in existence, sure so let’s work on that before we create 48 more universities in the state. - Candy Dogood - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 5:31 pm: No. Here’s the problem. Community Colleges and the State Universities are supposed to be operating in conjunction. They’re not supposed to be competing against each other directly for students. Our failures as a State have caused us to inadequately fund public higher education. A 4 year degree at a public university is is set at a level of expense that is both cruel and hilarious as we depend on higher levels of education attainment in a society. The purpose of Land Grant universities has been lost as we have passed most of the expense of that education onto the students themselves. Programs at community colleges to offer 4 year degrees would require a significant amount of scaling up by hiring more faculty, more staff, and more bureaucratic expense. Not to mention the questions about accreditation or the competitiveness in the job market when there is absolutely no way that any perspective employer is going to treat a 4 year degree from a community college the same way as a 4 year degree from an actual university that produces research and scholarship and have classes taught, at least in theory, by people with Ph.D.s who continue to contribute to their fields and stay current on topics. The State of Illinois also at this point potentially has too many state universities for the number of students seeking to attend and we should potentially considering consolidation of those universities. If we’re visiting this concept, maybe we should completely reform the entire system. If a community college is going to have a taxing district and offer 4 year degrees, why not let the state universities have taxing districts? This change is getting off mission, getting off purpose, and will serve to deflate the value of a 4 year degree. - Yesterday’s Chairman - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 6:28 pm: I vote no. Many community colleges have dubious connections with local political organizations and have laissez-faire oversight. If ICCB had an Inspector General with clear authority over local community colleges, that would be a first step. - IllinoisCitizen - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 8:21 pm: I realize that no comment can completely capture every scenario, but for those of you commenting yes because of the problems at the transferring (4 year college), you seem to take at face value that the students are ready to step into year three. I work at a directional. I have seen nursing studnets who come in with no chemistry. They have some of the work experience, but none of the education that girds it. Business students who come in with no math, and haven’t been encouraged to take math, who are then 3-4 semesters behind because the CC didn’t help them correctly. A student in chemistry who though they could go right into junior-level chemistry despite having no math done. A person wanting to do work in psychology not understanding that just because they took psychology in high school, that it didn’t count. My stories are anecdotal, but they are real. … An there is not sub-capacity at schools. There may be at UIUC, but perhaps if we dropped the belief that anyone who wants to go to the UI system should just get to go, or that politicians bemoan that they didn’t get into the UIUC. Maybe we should ask those folks why the other state schools are seen as so inferior. - Abu Iskandr - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 10:06 pm: Many of the community colleges that have advocated for the baccalaureate offerings *have* been trying to work with the Universities on clear articulation agreements that allow for smooth (and economical) transitions. The colleges supported that… the University Presidents supported that… but the University college deans and department chairs, that actually hold the responsibility for enforcing standards, have historically been very reluctant to work with their own Presidents and community colleges not nearby (UIUC-Parkland; NIU-Kishwaukee; etc.) to find a common solution. There have been quite a few suggestions on this post, as well as over the years, that can offer a pathway to get students, colleges, universities, and our workforce everything they all want. - Yooper in Diaspora - Monday, Mar 3, 25 @ 11:22 pm: As I read the comments, I like the idea of the BAS; that truly meets an unfilled need in the state. I am not convinced that there has been a serious enough effort to emphasize and built collaborations between community colleges and four year schools–including by having more programs with hybrid courses on the community college campuses, taught by faculty from 4-year schools. I am also concerned that the requirement of keeping tuition low means that adjuncts will be relied upon, and that pay will be too low. TrackBack URI Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.