The Politics of Remediation and Free Community College

As part of his "State of the Union" address, President Obama proposed a program that would grant students the equivalent of  two years of full-time tuition at community colleges. Obama pointed to a Tennessee program as a model for this national initiative, In a time where there's tremendous focus on the growing cost of college, this grand idea has drawn significant positive attention, and some equally vehement backlash.  The debate over the "America's Promise" plan for free community college for students who maintain a 2.5 GPA and have family adjusted gross incomes of less than $200,000 reveals some of the stratification and politics of access and representation that Mary Soliday explored in her 2002 The Politics of Remediation: Institutional and Student Needs in Higher Education.

Part of the issue that some have is that Obama has chosen not to expand the Pell Grant, which can be used for tuition at 4-year colleges as well as community colleges. Many of those advocating expansion of the Pell instead of the President's plan have an interest in maintaining enrollment in 4-year universities, which have felt the pinch of budget cuts and the backlash against rising tuition rates caused by the withdrawal of government support for higher education. These articles tend to highlight research (or sometimes "research") that proves that 4-year colleges have better outcomes:

• "Only about 15 percent of students who start out at a community college earn a bachelor’s degree after six years. And, researchers have found that when students with similar test scores and grades attend community college or a four-year school, the latter are far more likely to earn a degree." --This claim privileges test scores and grades as indicators of higher education success, but ignores other factors that might help explain the differences. In some ways, it seems a bit circular to me. Students do better in higher education because 4-year institutions are better at education.  
• As it is, many community college students don't respect their education. Less than half of students who enter a community college graduate or transfer to a four-year college within six years, according to a report called "Reclaiming the American Dream: Community Colleges and the Nation's Future." If these community college students aren't serious when paying for their education, imagine how their perspective will deteriorate when it's free? And as a result, the graduation rate will continue to decline." --Steve Seibold.  This claim seems to be all about student agency. It's the students' fault that they don't graduate because community college students (read "the underclass") already don't share "our" values. SES and culture become conflated in a fatalistic"there's just some who we can't save from themselves" type of argument. Siebold conveniently ignores the GPA stipulations while simultaneously defending the stratification of higher education by reaffirming the gatekeeper role of the community college--those people go there because they can't cut it in higher tier institutions.

Do I think that community colleges are the answer? I'm not sure. Pell Grants should be expanded, but there are many families that identify as "middle class" that the Pell Grants don't help. Those families could benefit from this plan. But both expanding the Pell and enacting America's Promise require a level of societal commitment to education and to funding that education through government programs that I don't think we have the will to do, despite all of our claims about the value of an education.