In order to help new generations of Americans achieve middle-class employment and pay, RAMC is dedicated to ensuring student success at our partner institutions. However, supporting community college students requires a specific, unique mindset that unfortunately many policymakers do not have or realize. We believe that adequately supporting community college students is dependent on improvements in three areas: federal regulations, data collection, and wraparound services.

Federal Regulations

More bureaucracy and red tape cause less innovation and focus on ensuring students complete their education and find steady, middle-class jobs. Regulations, including those related to gainful employment and cash management, can hinder community colleges’ abilities to productively serve their students.

The burden regulations often have on institutions is evidenced by the increasing number of community colleges that have opted-out of the federal student loan program, as mentioned above. Further consideration must be given to ways regulations can be reduced and streamlined, leading to institutions being readily able to participate in the federal student loan program, and generally speaking, best serve their students.

Transparency and Data

RAMC believes that the current federal data system is broken, particularly for community college students. Current policy discussions are based on data representing “traditional” full-time students. However, most of today’s students do not attend school on a full-time basis. While RAMC encourages transparency and accountability, the federal data system must be improved to truly capture the outcomes and success of community college students. Our ideas for improving the collection of higher education data can be summed up in two main ways:

Improve postsecondary data systems. Federal programs have a built-in bias towards first-time, full-time residential college experiences. RAMC supports efforts to update and expand the ability of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) and other federal data programs, and to improve state longitudinal data systems, to be more useful to community colleges and their students. However, even with expected improvements to IPEDS, this will not fully address the current issues this system faces with inaccurate reporting. Work needs to continue to be done to address this ongoing issue and implementation of any new policies, such as risk-sharing mentioned above, should be contingent on accurate and complete data.

Rationalize existing data collection to focus on meaningful metrics. Policymakers need to work to create new performance metrics that make sense for community college populations. This would require not only the development of new data for performance indicators, but also, the reduction or elimination of data collection that is unnecessary, duplicative or unused.

Wraparound Services

To ensure that community college students are able to access, attend, and succeed in school it is essential that they have access to wraparound services that support their needs. Wraparound services often make the difference between a community college student completing their education or stopping out. These services for students are typically access to child care (for student parents), food assistance, transportation, housing assistance and health care.

RAMC is committed to supporting legislation to ensure that programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), the Housing Choice Voucher Program and the Affordable Care Act, better serve community college students. Often, these programs are difficult to access and navigate, making it difficult for students to access services that would help them succeed in school. Many of these programs are in need of better coordination to work for and ensure the success of low-income community college students.