With enrollment down and funding cut, leader of U.S. community colleges says his bunch is in trouble

During the Great Recession, more students turned to community colleges to save money, and enrollment at those schools zoomed. But since the end of the recession, fewer students are enrolling in community colleges, and state funding has declined, putting the future of some of those institutions in jeopardy, according to J. Noah Brown, president and chief executive officer of the Association of Community College Trustees, Chris Parr reports for Times Higher Education.

Brown told Parr, "Where a college may once have got 40 percent of its support from the state, it may now be receiving 12 percent. About two-thirds of our community colleges are based primarily in rural areas. These are very small colleges with 400 or 500 students. I’m worrying . . . about those institutions’ ability to survive in a student market that may be declining, as well as a market where we’d do well to stabilize public funding.”

Brown's "warning comes after a survey of state community college directors by the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa’s Education Policy Center found that although many expect 'modest percentage increases in state appropriations' next year, declining enrollment would mean 'less overall tuition income,'” Parr writes. (Read more) For a list of every community college in the U.S. click here.