Expanding what success means for our nation’s community colleges

As debates rage about the value of higher education and confidence continues to erode in the impact of higher education institutions, community colleges need to remind the public and policymakers of their mission and demonstrate the understandable and measurable effects for the students they enroll and the communities they serve.

Community colleges have always been valued as the first entry point into higher education for first-generation students, veterans and other underserved student populations. Two decades ago, institutions sought to strengthen their impact by focusing on increasing credential completion and speeding the time it takes students to earn them. More recently, colleges are using labor market data tools to look more closely at the percentage of students who go on to further education, employment and whether degrees have led to higher wages – ensuring that no one graduates into poverty.

These have been critical steps – and now it is time to add measures of community impact to those student success outcomes.

For example, Durham Technical Community College, which serves Durham and Orange counties in the Research Triangle region of North Carolina, has worked to increase completion rates to 60% and ensure at least 80% of students are in jobs earning at least median wages in their fields.

The college has also established services that it recognizes would make a difference for its students and the surrounding community. The college is building 124 units of affordable housing for the Durham community, runs a food pantry that in 2024 provided 64,538 pounds of food for 6,822 people, including its students and local households with children, and launched a Mobile Health Lab that provides addiction-related services and free vision screenings and prescription glasses to low-income residents.

Moving forward, Durham Tech is using its strategic planning process to more intentionally organize, scale and assess these actions based on their impact on the Durham community. The college will work with local community and elected leadership to identify a series of goals that measure success beyond the walls of the campus, such as reducing child poverty or bolstering labor force participation in select Census tracts.

Measuring these and other priorities to improve both student success and community well-being are critical components to reversing the stubborn trend of economic inequality and to help more communities thrive.

That community colleges around the country do this already is undebatable; that they begin to measure it is urgent.

Spreading community vibrancy

Community colleges are well-positioned to bring credibility across a broad swath of communities and the trust that their engagement is genuine and community-centered. They have the people, partnerships and resources that can drive progress not just in these and other areas that are local and regional.

Achieving the Dream (ATD) has and continues to facilitate this work with colleges that are part of its network to introduce a new Community Vibrancy Framework. The framework aims to support colleges in expanding access to higher education and lowering costs for students, create greater social and economic mobility for more learners and their families, and help communities flourish across a broad range of measures.

Designed to move student success beyond completion and connect institutional transformation efforts with community impact, the framework calls on colleges to adopt a six-point framework:

Conduct intentional outreach connecting their work to populations left behind by postsecondary education.
Expand affordable access to provide financial support and keep student debt down.
Create early momentum by improving first-year progression and persistence.
Ensure completion of degrees and credentials of labor market value.
Spark upward mobility promoting economic and social advancement.
Establish vibrant communities with individual, family, and societal gains.

Durham Tech and 14 other colleges in the ATD Network have tested the approach and have worked in partnership with their communities on addressing crucial local and regional challenges.

Other ATD institutions have taken on different aspects of the agenda, focusing on identifying new industries to expand in their regions; helping justice-impacted people and people recovering from addiction find a secure place for themselves in community colleges to clean their records and be supported to rebuild their lives; providing supports not just for current students but for growing populations that previously believed that college was not for them. Much of this work is summarized in the recent report, “Connecting Access and Credential Attainment to Economic Mobility and Community Vibrancy” and in a series of college-specific profiles available here.

Community colleges can be a part of higher education that can help win back trust and reclaim higher education’s value. They begin with a foundation of trust and credibility in their communities because they are seen as accessible and affordable pathways to education attainment and improved economic opportunity. They are also viewed as welcoming and responsive to the broad diversity of students who attend. That’s in our DNA.

What’s critical is for colleges to fully live up to that promise. To find ways to serve even more of our communities – who for whatever reason are not with us and improve the rates of completion to ensure graduates move on to careers with living wages and opportunities for mobility that allow them to climb the economic ladder.

We are charged with connecting the full range of talent in our communities to the full range of opportunity. When we do that, we will ensure trust and a belief in higher education’s value.

It is our challenge to ensure the rhetoric of the community college is, in fact, the reality. Because in the end what speaks last and loudest is not what we say we are, but what the success of our students and communities reveals us to be.

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