Will Florida’s New Funding System for Community Colleges Work?

Florida has implemented a new accountability system for community colleges, but whether it accounts for the unique role of community colleges is a trickier question.

A New System for Florida Community Colleges

As institutions, community colleges are meant to provide opportunity to those otherwise unable to pursue higher education, so it’s a serious concern when these schools fail to engage and retain students.

The disparity among community colleges in South Florida shows that it doesn’t take an egghead to realize something needs to be done about graduation numbers. Graduation rates reach as low as 34 percent at Miami Dade College and an impressive 65 percent at Santa Fe College in Gainesville. This is why the Florida legislature adopted a new performance-funding plan that will determine how community colleges receive their share of state funding.

Rather than continuing to receive blanket funding towards initiatives that hire better professors or improve student advising, community colleges in Florida are now categorized as gold, silver or bronze schools. Gold schools take the lion’s share of funding, silver schools get a smaller share, and bronze-tier colleges actually get their funding cut.

The idea behind this plan is to improve school-wide accountability by grabbing hold of school wallets, similar to how many public schools in Florida are graded and awarded funding based on their student’s performance.

But How Do You Account for Transfers?

While it does introduce accountability, the plan doesn’t take into account a number of factors that are kind of important when looking at the quality of an education.

Namely, many students attending community colleges intend to transfer over to four-year universities rather than finishing their education at the community college. Many college students head to community colleges because it gives them time to prepare themselves and fix any academic problems they incurred in grade school.

That’s not going to stop now that community colleges are also being graded for the sake of their budgets. So, rather than reward community colleges for preparing their students at different steps of their education, this plan might unfairly punish schools for skewed rates when a student realizes their goal of moving to a full four-year university.

Also, pressuring community colleges to graduate more students can compel their administration to offer more courses with less rigorous workloads in order to raise the overall grades of students. In turn, this weakens the quality of a student’s education and their resultant worth in the job market.

Grade Inflation Helps No One

Raising grades at the cost of education might solve a poor graduation rate, but, frankly, it’s a high cost to pay when you’re trying to prepare kids for the real world. Nor does it really address the underlying factors faced by community colleges.

Easier classes at a community college create less-prepared students when they move on to a four-year college. This could actually affect broader graduation rates throughout the state if those same students end up having to drop out as a result.

Our Take

A university needs to be able to focus on the quality of its education, rather than the amount of dollars going into the next budget cycle. Accountability in education is absolutely crucial, but there’s a present risk of this new development causing more harm than good.

Schools also need to be closely monitored on the quality of their teaching, not just the rate of the students simply getting through the program. Community Colleges provide a second chance for many students, but trying to manage them like a grade school or a four-year university does not demonstrate a full understanding of their place in the education system.