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 In July President Obama announced the American Graduation Initiative, which is a 10-year, $12 billion plan to invest in the nation’s community colleges. During his announcement at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan, Obama noted that the economic recession has reduced the number of jobs and claims the investment in community colleges is critical because jobs requiring at least an associate degree are projected to grow twice as fast as jobs requiring no college experience.
According to Education Undersecretary Martha Kanter, the plan is a crucial investment because in the past community colleges have not 'done enough to get students through, to move them into the work force and to get them through the higher-education transfer programs.' Due to the high dropout rate, about 75 percent of the money will go toward creating grant programs for schools and states to test new programs. These programs will be structured to help improve student learning, student completion rates, and schools' abilities to track academic progress. (source: CNN.com)
Four areas will be focused on during the initiative to modernize community colleges and strengthen the academic programs in place.
Community College Challenge Grants
The community college challenge grants are the heart of the program, which will require colleges to design new programs or restructure their existing curricula. This will include offering dual enrollment at high schools and universities, expanding course offerings, and promoting the transfer of credit among colleges.
The program will also facilitate the building of partnerships with businesses to create worksite education programs to build basic skills, hands on learning and promote internships and job placements. Also read How to Reasearch Your Financial Aid Options for additional information about financing a college education.
The Access and Completion Fund
The College Access and Completion Fund will finance the efforts to increase college graduation rates and close achievement gaps. The Access and Completion Fund initiative will provide performance-based scholarships based on student progress and success. Colleges will also be tailored to promote the success of working adults and more programs will be scheduled at non traditional times configured around work hours.
Modernization of Community-Colleges
$2.5 billion is going to help renovate and expand facilities and keep up with maintenance costs. Between the academic years that ended in 2002 and 2006, two thirds of all state community colleges reported deferred maintenance needs. At this same time, approximately 2.3 million new students enrolled in community college courses. Community college enrollment has been increasing at more than three times the rate of four-year colleges yet four-year colleges receive three times as much federal money per student as community colleges.
Open Online Courses
 Open online courses will be a tool to help students learn more in less time than they would with traditional classroom instruction alone. Obama plans to spend $500 million expanding students' access to online education working with The Departments of Defense, Education, and Labor to make the courses freely available through one or more community colleges. The administration hopes to create new online courses and explore ways to award academic credit based upon achievement rather than class hours.
The new initiatives will complement the existing agenda to increase college affordability for students. Currently the Administration is working on several acts to help students with the cost of higher education by expanding Pell Grants from $500 to $5,350 and creating the $2,500 American Opportunity Tax Credit for four years of college tuition, reforming the student loan program by replacing guaranteed loans with direct loans and simplifying the financial aid application. (source: WhiteHouse.gov)
Approximately half of students attending community colleges drop out before getting a degree and with little federal support, the lack of employees don’t have the time or resources to devote to retaining students. However; with Obama's goal to help 5 million more Americans graduate from two-year schools and the first major, federally funded community college construction project since the1960s, community colleges may be the next big step in education. (sources: WashingtonPost.com, USNews.com)
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