ANN ARBOR—Michigan’s community college enrollment has soared by 49.8 percent since 1999-2000 even as K-12 enrollment has fallen by 104,090 students or 6 percent.

Michigan community college enrollments have grown to the full-time equivalent of 161,223 students as economically displaced workers change careers and as new government incentives, including a new GI Bill, encourage people to return to school.

Peter Riley Bahr, a University of Michigan expert on community colleges, has completed the rare journey from community college student to Ph.D. scholar. Bahr himself spent a portion of his early college years at a community college, and he began his research career at the state office that administers all of California’s community colleges, which collectively constitute the largest postsecondary system in the world.

Besides conducting a great deal of research on the rapidly evolving community colleges, he is teaching a new course in January on community college students.

“More than any other type of higher education institution, the community college draws students of incredibly varied backgrounds, pursuing academic objectives that are equally varied,” said Bahr, an assistant professor of higher education at U-M’s Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education.

More growth is expected in the years ahead. President Obama came to Macomb Community College in Warren, Mich., last July to detail his plans to invest $12 billion to meet the goal of helping 5 million more Americans earn degrees or certificates from community colleges by 2020. Meanwhile, the new GI Bill, which took effect last August, is expected to greatly increase the number of Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans who attend college.

Bahr’s research has looked at issues such as:

Remediation
A great challenge for community colleges is to bring students’ basic skills in math and English up to the level required to succeed in college coursework?so-called postsecondary remediation.

In a recent study of 28,089 remedial math students, Bahr found that only 28 percent completed a college math course. The reasons for the low rate of success are numerous, but one significant problem is that severely deficient students must take many courses and stay in college quite a long time to “catch up” their math skills, he says, adding that “retaining students long enough to fix severe skill deficiencies remains challenging.”

College Hopping
While most analysts look at community college students’ upward transfer to four-year colleges, Bahr found that 27 percent make “lateral transfers” from one community college to another within six years of first entering college, resulting in “substantial undercounts” of the number of students who complete degrees.

Given that the success of a community college often is measured by how many of the students who began at the college eventually graduate, the large number of students who transfer between community colleges gives a misleadingly poor picture of how community colleges are doing, Bahr says.

He also found that 34 percent of younger, traditional-aged students transfer laterally compared to just 7 percent of the oldest community college students (those age 50 and over).

Classifying Students
Although it is widely recognized that students in community colleges vary greatly from one another, Bahr is taking this understanding one step further by developing a classification scheme based on students’ behaviors. In a recent study, Bahr classified 165,921 community college students into six categories: transfer, vocational, drop-in, noncredit, experimental and exploratory.

Of particular interest, he found that 32 percent of all first-time students are drop-ins, who take just one or two classes, complete them successfully, and then leave college, apparently having achieved their goals.

“This gives you a sense of just how varied the goals are of students who are served by community colleges,” Bahr said. “Some students just want to take a class or two for career advancement or other reasons, some want to complete a degree, and some want to transfer to a four-year college. The community college meets all of these needs and more.”

Enrollment at Michigan’s four-year universities has grown 12 percent since 1999-2000, from 227,973 to 257,203, while community college enrollment has increased by more than four times that rate, hitting 11.7 million today, or 44 percent of total U.S. college enrollments.

Fifty-three percent of community college students are age 22 or older, with the average age now at 29. Many are employed full-time, 36 percent are minorities, 17 percent are single parents and 39 percent are the first generation in their family to attend college.

“When we think about how to improve the state of the economy, especially the economy of southeastern Michigan, the community college is at the center of the action,” Bahr said. “Whether we’re seeking to help the daunting number of people who have trouble with reading, writing or math, or providing job skills to the unemployed, or retraining laid-off workers, or offering a cost effective way for young people to transition to a four-year college, it’s the community college that is going to provide those services.”

U-M’s Center for the Study of Higher and Post Secondary Education, visit:

http://www.soe.umich.edu/cshpe/

BahrCenter for the Study of Higher and Post Secondary Education