White House to shine deserved spotlight on community colleges

[Better Believe It]

White House to shine deserved spotlight on community colleges
By Juleyka Lantigua-Williams
October 4, 2010

As an instructor at a community college, I’m delighted the White House is spotlighting the importance of institutions like mine.

On Oct. 5, Jill Biden, Vice President Joe Biden’s wife and a 17-year veteran professor at a community college, will convene the first-ever White House Summit on Community Colleges to address their “critical role … as part of America’s economic vision for the future.”

The future has always been very much in sight at community colleges, which diligently prepare millions of professionals for careers that have a tremendous impact on our lives.

For instance, close to 80 percent of our firefighters, law enforcement officers and emergency medical personnel are trained at our nation’s 1,173 community colleges, according to the American Association of Community Colleges. Future accountants, actors and directors, computer software engineers, electricians, entrepreneurs, nurses, plumbers and teachers get degrees there.

As an instructor at Naugatuck Valley Community College in Waterbury, Conn., I welcome more eager new students every semester. Among my students are young veterans just returning from serving our country, single mothers striving to improve their families’ odds, immigrants who are the first to attend college, grandmothers who lost their longtime jobs and seek retraining and high school honor students who couldn’t afford tuition at private schools.

Because community colleges are relatively inexpensive, they attract a diverse student body: 42 percent are the first to attend college in their families; about 40 percent are students of color; 16 percent are 40 or older, as reported by the American Association of Community Colleges.

It’s about time the national spotlight shone on community colleges.

Read the full article at:

http://www.progressive.org/mplantuiga100410.html

[Quantess]

1. Too late to recommend.