Washington, DC, July 14—Today, officials from the White House Domestic Policy Council, Department of Education and Department of Labor hosted a teleconference to discuss President Obama’s Community College Initiative.

According to Martha Kanter, the Undersecretary of Education, the focus of community colleges has previously been on access and affordability. Now, the Obama administration is trying to offer more to bring more students into higher education—in fact, the goal is to double the 6 million students who graduate from community colleges by 2020.

Martha Coven of the White House Domestic Policy Council said the plan has two elements, designed to increase the number of people completing degrees: the Community College Challenge Fund [1] and a separate "access and completion" fund to improve accountability and quality of the programs.

The Community College Challenge Fund
This new Community College Challenge Fund will encourage the building of community-based partnerships between colleges, local businesses and nonprofit organizations in order to strengthen the college-to-work pipeline. Universities, nonprofits and other organizations will also have the opportunity to apply for federal grants in order to develop courses for community colleges. Connections between community colleges and four-year institutions aim to encourage students to stay in school for longer than an Associate’s degree. The Initiative also addresses remedial and developmental education for those who need it, and a wrap-around of services that help students stay in school.

Stronger Emphasis on Quality & Accountability
The second element of the Initiative goes hand in hand with the Challenge Fund: creating a new system of measuring progress and access to see how effective these programs are.

The proposed access and completion fund will be critical to “getting people to reach the finish line, measuring results and seeing what works,” Coven said during the teleconference.

The Community College Initiative will be a $12 billion investment over the next 10 years, according to teleconference participants. About $500 million a year will go towards developing online education, $2.5 billion will cover campus construction costs, and the remaining $9 billion will go to the Challenge and Completion Funds.

U.S. Representative George Miller (D-CA), Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, plans to introduce the initiative in the House of Representatives on July 16 as part of larger bill to make college more affordable and reform student loans.

“[The community college initiative] will transform our community colleges into high-quality vessels for education and job training by driving partnerships between community colleges, local employers, and communities. And it will offer free, high-quality, online training courses to help prepare Americans of all ages, from high school and college students to displaced workers, for the careers of the future,” Rep. Miller said in a " target="_blank">statement [2].

How child and youth organizations across the country will respond to this initiative remains to be seen, but at least one advocate is excited. Elizabeth Gaines, the Forum for Youth Investment’s policy program director, told me: “This is so refreshing. We haven’t seen anything like this in years.”

Learn More

• CFK’s <>a Post-Secondary Education topic page.

• Audio: Bleak Economy Squeezes Community Colleges [3] (National Public Radio, July 10, 2009)