Transforming America's community colleges

7/27/2009 11:55:51 AM

Recently, the influential Brookings Institute released a report calling for a major federal investment in community and technical colleges.

Siting years of growing enrollments and the relatively small portion of federal higher education funds flowing to community colleges, the authors call for the Obama Administration and Congress to "transform our community colleges into engines of opportunity and prosperity by targeting new investments to those colleges that succeed in helping their students succeed."

Along with this new investment, the authors propose the establishment a new accountability system - a series of national postsecondary goals and performance measures to support the effective use of federal resources.

The report appears to have had a significant impact on President Obama, whose American Graduation Initiative uses the general framework detailed in the Brookings paper.

Read more on Transforming America's Community Colleges.