Cost-Wary Students Turn to Community Colleges

More students are starting college at cheaper two-year schools, and more community colleges are making the transfer to university easier

By Jane Porter

When Amanda Balarezo graduated from MAST Academy in Miami last spring, she had a 4.0 high school GPA, acceptance letters to four top-choice colleges, and aspirations to one day go to medical school. The 18-year-old from a comfortable middle class family had already bought a new winter wardrobe in anticipation of the cold weather at her dream school, the University of Maryland, but at the last minute, Balarezo—not ready to leave home—changed her mind. Instead she took the route more and more high-achieving students are taking these days as the economy plunges: community college.

Now a freshman at Miami Dade College, the largest community college in the country, Balarezo is saving the more than $36,000 a year it would have cost to go to Maryland. In fact, "I make money," says Balarezo, who pocketed $5,000 in extra scholarship royalties this semester alone. It's money she plans to use when she transfers in two years, her eye set on University of Southern California, Johns Hopkins, Georgetown, or New York University.

At a time when parents and college students are saddled with soaring tuition bills (BusinessWeek.com, 10/29/08)>, a growing contingent are recognizing just how much they can save by substituting the first two years of school with community college. As a result, community colleges are seeing their number of traditional college-age students growing faster than any other demographic. "What has happened with this economic downturn is middle class families…see that one of their children can come here and get the same courses they can get at a university at a reasonable cost and transfer over," says James Ortiz, president of Southern Maine Community College, where enrollment is up 11% this year and a new honors program fast-tracks students to go on to get a four-year college degree.

More Like University

While community colleges have long been a place for students to get vocational training and graduate into the workforce after two years, the demographic shift is leading these schools to operate more like traditional colleges: developing study abroad offerings, student organizations, honors programs, and even building on-campus housing. This year, Onondaga Community College in New York and Hillsborough Community College in Florida are adding housing to their campuses to accommodate the growing number of students wanting to live on campus. Like Southern Maine Technical College, Des Moines Area Community College in Indiana recently added an honors program to the curriculum to appeal to higher-achieving students planning to transfer to four-year schools. "For many high school seniors…it is becoming a first-choice option," says Phil Day, president of the National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators.

Today more than half of all community colleges have honors programs, which means students have access to classes often much smaller than those at large public four-year schools. At Kingsborough Community College in New York, an honors freshman biology class has a total of 17 students, while the same class at a more expensive four-year state university counterpart easily has 10 times the number of students. Kieshorne Dennie, an honors freshman at Kingsborough this fall had a hard time enrolling at any of the six four-year colleges where he was accepted. When his mother lost her job during his senior year of high school, Dennie scrapped plans to go to State University of New York at Plattsburgh, where annual tuition is $4,350, and enrolled instead at Kingsborough at nearly a third of the cost. "It was astounding. I save about $16,000 going to a community college my first two years [including living and other expenses]," says Dennie. "I jumped on that."

Already, community colleges across the country are making the transfer process easier for students like Dennie. At Florida community colleges, classes are given standard course codes so that students can easily transfer credits to four-year schools.