Community college baccalaureate programs continue to become increasingly commonplace as more two-year schools overcome political resistance with a combination of strategic degree build-outs based on student and workforce demand, along with a respectful, partnership-oriented stance toward their university brethren.
As of mid-April — and the numbers change regularly — 24 states allowed community colleges to confer workforce-focused bachelor’s degrees, and 205 community colleges in those states were offering 736 different options, according to Angela Kersenbrock, president of the Community College Baccalaureate Association (CCBA), which compiles data on such programs, much of it in conjunction with Bragg & Associates, Inc.
“That number changes every week,” she says. “Several other states are looking at this. It’s a perfect intersection between economic opportunity for the student and for the communities that they live in.”
CCBA figures show completion rates of such programs generally have been strong — upward of 80% within four years nationally — in part because they tend to attract students beyond traditional college-going age who have found their direction in life, Kersenbrock says.
CCBA brief: ‘What It Takes to Get Community College Bachelor’s Degree Programs Approved’
“They’ve been working as a server and realize, ‘This is not going to get me the American dream. I’m not going to sustain my family with this,’” she says. “They go back to school, and they’re very motivated.”
Some degree-holders earn as much, if not more, than university graduates in the same field, possibly because they have had work experience before reentering school, CCBA data show, while 60% of such degree holders are female, and 51% are people of color.
“The community college baccalaureate is living up to its promise of providing opportunities for people who decided, for whatever reason, that the university wasn’t for them,” Kersenbrock says. “It could be distance, or cost or flexibility [of schedule].”
Communicating with lawmakers
Political resistance from some university systems has been the most significant hurdle to establishing these degree programs, Kersenbrock says, but they often come around when they realize it’s not necessarily a win-lose scenario.
“We always want it to be a win-win,” she says. “We value our universities tremendously. We wouldn’t want to see anything hurt them.” But, she adds, “These students never had any intention of going on to the university. It’s either a community college baccalaureate, a for-profit turnkey thing, or they’re not going on.”
In addition, some students go to the university for their master’s degree, and longer term, their children have greater opportunities as they reach college age because the family is in a better financial situation, Kersenbrock says.
“This opens doors and makes things possible,” she says.
Related article: 7 ways to scale up community college baccalaureates
State legislatures should examine whether they meet economic development and bachelor’s attainment goals, Kersenbrock says.
“If you have education deserts in your state where there’s not a university around, think about what’s best for the student, family, community and state,” she says. “If you have an incredible shortage of teachers, why are we fighting over this? When we have a dangerous level of vacancies for RNs [registered nurses], why are we holding back community colleges from doing this?”
Washington state: An early adopter
With 173 bachelor’s degree programs, Washington state has about one-quarter of all the baccalaureate programs in the country, first offered via a pilot program 20 years ago and then fully authorized 15 years ago. Currently, about 4,800 students are enrolled full-time, with an average age of 30, and every two-year college in the state offers at least one, according to Joyce Hammer, chief academic officer for the Washington State Board of Community and Technical Colleges.
“We are appealing to a student who would not be pursuing the traditional transfer route,” she says. “That’s our message to our four-year partners: ‘We’re not taking students from you. We’re getting more students a bachelor’s degree.’
Colleges must bring program proposals to the state board after considering local labor market needs and whether there are other similar programs, says Laura McDowell, the board’s communications director.
Programs are all accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities, which ensures a level of quality, says Hammer, adding that some students have continued to master’s degree programs at the University of Washington (UW). The community college system has expanded into areas like computer science (through a partnership with Amazon), education, human services and other health-related fields beyond nursing.
Related article: More data on good jobs for CC baccalaureate grads
“When the degrees first came, people were skeptical: ‘Are they going to get jobs at Microsoft, or Google?’ ” she says. “Yes, they are getting jobs at those major employers.”
When the state legislature signed off on the concept, UW was mostly uninterested in bachelor’s that built off technical degrees, and a couple of college presidents and a statewide business group called the Washington Roundtable championed the idea, Hammer says. At first, the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Board oversaw program approvals, but the community and technical board later was given that power, she says.
“Our four-year universities were not blindsided,” McDowell notes. “We’re very conscious of working in close partnership with nearby universities. That’s seen in the transfer agreements. We have a mutual level of partnership and trust.”
While universities don’t have approval power, their faculty do review the outcomes of degrees, she adds.
Colorado: Several years in
The Colorado legislature approved community college baccalaureate degrees in 2014, and by 2018, the first BSN degrees were offered. There are now 15 programs across the state’s community and technical colleges, including six BSN degree opportunities, according to Michael Macklin, associate vice chancellor for workforce solutions at the Colorado Community College System.
“The system is not prescribing what schools should offer,” he says. “That comes from the schools, based on local workforce demand, and the institutional capacity. … Nursing directors across the system got together and said, ‘What should we look at offering?’ We’re seeing that [pattern] persist across degrees and disciplines, where it makes sense and where multiple schools want to offer a program.”
In the initial stages, degree proposals required approval from the Colorado Department of Higher Education, and universities could nix ideas, Macklin says. But that authority has changed to the State Board for Community Colleges and Occupational Education based on workforce demand, institutional capacity and other components. The school still must show projections in terms of workforce demand, student demand and its own institutional capacity, he says.
“One of the reasons we looked at the bachelor’s science in nursing was, not only the nursing shortage, but we were hearing from alumni that they would really like to complete their bachelor’s with the institution they started with,” Macklin says. Other popular degrees include behavioral health and business administration, he adds. “Some of them are very niche, very specific to certain areas or certain discipline expertise. And then others are broader and could be picked up by various institutions.”
For example, the state’s 13 colleges leaned into the system’s “Power of 13” theme to build the behavioral health degree, coordinated through the system office, Macklin says. Faculty collaborated to address issues such as what courses to offer and how to design them.
Arizona: Passed during the pandemic
Maricopa Community Colleges in the Phoenix area had fought for most of this century to gain approval for baccalaureates, which finally passed the state legislature in 2021, says Steven Gonzales, the district’s chancellor. Two years later, the county system rolled out seven degrees with more than 2,000 students enrolled in the first semester alone, and Maricopa will have, as of the fall, four-year degrees in nursing, education, business, and artificial intelligence and machine learning.
“We are not in any race to get to a magic number,” Gonzales says. “We’re following the legislative regulations around this that say we have to prove there’s a workforce demand and need, and we have to mitigate replication and duplication of degrees that universities are already offering. We ultimately get to decide, though; we just have to provide this report to the state. We have to notify our universities, but they don’t have the authority to approve or disapprove degrees we’re going to offer.”
Maricopa realized early on that it needed to pursue a collaborative effort rather than going in 10 different directions, and the system formed task forces to continue monitoring which degrees to offer and at which colleges, Gonzales says. Four years into the effort, the system hit “pause” this year to assess how things have gone and what the next five years will look like.
With no state funding, “We’ve got to be very cautious and make sure we can deliver on the promise we’re making when we offer a bachelor’s degree,” Gonzales says.
More than 5,000 students enrolled this spring in the programs. Behavioral health sciences was “going gangbusters” for a while, but enrollment numbers in elementary education and early childhood have recently surpassed it, Gonzales says.
“Those degrees are, obviously, duplicating what public universities are offering, but they’re not meeting the demand,” Gonzales says. “At any given time, we have probably between 2,000 and 3,000 teachers in the state who have emergency certification, which the state allows due to shortages. We’re going to do our part to fill that shortage.”
To convince the state legislature, Maricopa and its fellow systems and schools argued that, as the state’s largest provider of workforce development, they could provide affordable, accessible bachelor’s degrees in most people’s backyards, Gonzales says.
“For most people living in Maricopa, given the number of sites, they’re likely just minutes away,” he says. “Public universities have multiple sites, too, but they’re a little more limited. That was a tremendous sell for our state legislators.”
Public universities pointed out that community colleges had lower graduation rates, but Gonzales pushed back: “We take the top 100% in Maricopa County. When you’re doing that, it comes with challenges. We’re up to the challenge. You can’t measure us purely based on graduating rate.”
Navigating politics and other advice
To help navigate politics with universities and otherwise move their systems forward toward approval, Kersenbrock advises community colleges and their state systems to understand universities’ concerns about losing enrollment but show why that won’t be the case.
“We’re not trying to imitate what universities are doing,” she says. “The adult student probably needs online, hybrid, evening and weekend [options], smaller classes and wraparound services. … These are not the students who need a pizza party Friday at 3 or 4 o’clock before going to the football game. These are moms and dads in your community trying to make a better life for themselves and their children. Who wouldn’t want to support that?”
Hammer in Washington state advises other states not to “fall into the trap” of allowing state universities to sign off — but do solicit their feedback.
“As long as there’s a demand for your students, that should be what drives this,” she says. And collect students’ stories, she urges. “Their stories are powerful,” she adds. “What matters to them is having this diploma, and the doors it opens.”
Retention rates have been considerably higher in baccalaureate programs than the community colleges system as a whole, typically in the 70s and 80s, Hammer says, and they’re only about 5% to 6% of overall community college programs, even after all this time.
“It doesn’t have the impact that universities were worried about, at the beginning, in terms of numbers,” she says.
Demonstrating the demand helped to overcome resistance in Colorado, especially around BSN programming, Macklin says.
“There was no way that there were enough programs in the state to train the number of BSN nurses we needed,” he says.
He adds that a tradeoff that gave universities the ability to offer associate degrees to students who had stopped out of their schools after the two-year mark also helped the legislation pass.
Macklin suggests that other states find and solicit community college champions in the state legislature, and to talk with systems like his that already have moved forward.
“I would collaborate with those other states and look at the policy mechanisms they’ve put in place, so you’re not starting from scratch,” he says. “And be prepared to show up with the data to prove why this is a beneficial move for your institutions and your state.”
Gonzalez similarly advises systems and schools in other states to resist giving universities approval over community colleges’ degrees but also to point out the potential advantages to them.
“I said to legislators and university officials: ‘Rather than trying to put up a barrier to the work we’re doing here, we’re going to continue to be a partner for you guys,’” he says. “That helped change the tone and narrative and made it an easier pill to swallow.”
While some might have seen it as “mission creep,” Gonzales says, the fast-growing nature of Maricopa County and the rapid economic growth post-pandemic ultimately convinced legislators that universities couldn’t meet the growing demand.
“It needs to be an all-hands-on-deck [effort] when you’re working with your state legislature,” he says. “Involve your governing board members, your faculty and students. … And involve your community and industry partners. We had all of these people come to the table, send letters and speak at hearing to let them know how important it was for us to be able to do this.”
