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Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Four-Year Degrees at CCs Boost Numbers

One of the arguments against permitting community colleges from offering bachelor’s degrees has always been that doing so would just shift students away from existing four-year schools in the area. However, a new study shows the opposite.

According to a report on the Education Dive site, the American Educational Research Association (AERA) found an overall increase in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded after community colleges began such programs. The study focused primarily on Florida, which in 2014 gave its community colleges the green light for bachelor’s degrees. As a result, 24 of those campuses now have at least one bachelor’s program.

AERA determined that there wasn’t much negative impact on enrollment or graduation rates at the four-year institutions located in the vicinity of baccalaurate-degree community colleges. In fact, most of the public four-year schools even experienced a rise in graduation numbers, although private schools didn’t get a similar bump.

On the other hand, for-profit schools did see a drop in degree output, which correlated to the growth at the neighboring community colleges.

“Both [two-year and four-year] school types should look to leverage connections in degree access and industrial development to create pipelines where neither campus type is competing with another,” noted the Education Dive report.