Community Colleges Like Attention, Need Money - Money News Story - KMGH Denver

Community Colleges Like Attention, Need Money - Money News Story - KMGH Denver

Community Colleges Like Attention, Need Money

Promoted As Way To Train Workers, Boost Grad Rates

ERIC GORSKI, AP National Writer

Politicians and policymakers are lavishing unprecedented attention on community colleges, promoting them as engines to train workers in the recession and boost the country's college graduation rates.

Where rhetoric meets reality on campus, you'll find people like Tania DeLeon, a student at Folsom Lake College in California who can't get into the classes she wants, must shuttle between two campuses 45 minutes apart and is spending spring break earning a paycheck so she can pay for gas and graduate on time.
Grappling with soaring enrollment and plummeting state support, community colleges are grateful for the higher profile but disappointed money has yet to materialize to help them keep up with demand, let alone meet ambitious Obama administration goals to make the U.S. the global leader in college graduates again by 2020.

"It's a difficult, challenging time for us," said George Boggs, president and CEO of the American Association of Community Colleges. "But in the longer term view, we've never seen the image of community colleges as high as it is right now. Overall,