Community Colleges as a Path to Social Mobility

This entry is about social mobility, the ability of Americans to climb the social and economic ladder. I have used statistics to illustrate the key points because this topic is about numbers – how much Americans earn and the changes in how much they earn. But the basic point that I want to make is that for individuals, a college is essential for a decent paying job and for most Americans of modest means, community colleges are the entry point for higher education.

From Horatio Alger to Barack Obama the opportunity and expectation of doing better economically than one’s parents is a foundation of our society. However, recent data shows that the ability of the average American to improve his or her lot has lessened over previous generations. The trend in America is less mobility and more income inequality. According to the May 14, 2009 New York Times article by David Leonhardt, the United States no longer has greater income mobility than many European countries. We now have roughly the same mobility as Britain but Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark surpass us. What this means is that in those latter countries families on average climb out of poverty faster than in the United States.

Additionally, income inequality even before the current recession has increased dramatically: for example the US Congressional Budget Office found that the real after-tax income of the wealthiest Americans – those in the top 1 per cent – rose by 176 per cent from 1979 to 2004. Meanwhile those in the poorest 20 percent of the population saw their income go up just 9 per cent in that same 25 year period.

One tried and true way to increase social mobility is through education. And today, that means college as most decent paying jobs require at least some post-secondary education.

In our economy, the value of a high school education has stagnated while that of a college education has grown. The figure that is most often cited is the disparity between a high school diploma and a bachelor’s degree. According to the US census, in 2006 Adults age 18 and older with a bachelor’s degree earned an average of $51,554 in 2004, while those with a high school diploma earned $28,645.

The point of entry for most Americans of modest means is public colleges and especially the community colleges. In Massachusetts, for example, last fall 79,000 undergraduates attended the University of Massachusetts and the state colleges and an additional 79,000 at the Commonwealth’s fifteen community colleges. These figures show that in the Commonwealth, community colleges serve half of all undergraduates. But as might be expected those who are first generation in college and ethnic minorities use community colleges as their point of entry: in Massachusetts 62% of all ethnic minority students start at our community colleges.

So, affordable and high quality education is essential for individuals and for our society and public higher education is more important than ever. This is another important reason to celebrate public higher education.