It wasn’t the $12 billion in community college funding that officials hoped for in 2010, but a $2 billion federal grant program unveiled in January could encourage two-year schools to develop open education material that would be freely available online.
Officials from the federal departments of Education (ED) and Labor introduced the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training (TAACCCT) Grants Program on Jan. 20, inviting community colleges—and other two-year degree-granting institutions—to apply for up to $5 million per institution, or up to $20 million to applicants who apply for funds in a consortium of schools.
ED will dole out about $500 million in 2011, and $2 billion will be distributed in the next four years overall, according to the announcement.
The federal program is about one-sixth of what community colleges were hoping for under the American Graduation Initiative (AGI), a $12 billion program introduced by President Obama that would have constituted the largest-ever investment in two-year college funding.
Getting the AGI through Congress proved untenable, so the $2 billion jobs-training package was included in the federal health care bill. Advocates of open education resources said the reduced amount could be a critical step toward mainstreaming openly available college courses on the web.
Beth Noveck, a professor at New York Law School and former U.S. Deputy Chief Technology Officer and Director of the White House Open Government Initiative, said in a statement that the grant initiative is a “historic step forward for open education.”
In a Jan. 20 blog post, Noveck said that under the terms of the grant program, if a community college uses federal funds to make an educational video game, “everyone will have the benefit of that knowledge,” and “anyone can translate it into Spanish or Russian or use it as the basis to create a new game.”
Still, the federal jobs-training initiative was disappointing for community college decision makers who believed the original AGI plan would revolutionize two-year campuses in the U.S.
“There’s a feeling that community colleges are always underfunded and under-recognized,” said Orlando Montoya, provost of Miami Dade College (MDC), which, with more than 170,000 students and eight campuses, ranks as the largest two-year institution in the U.S. “We had the hope that more recognition and support was going to come our way … but the political process didn’t allow for it.”
Montoya said MDC will team up with 22 Florida community colleges this year and apply for a federal grant through a consortium.
“We want to create a computerized clearinghouse for displaced workers and others who want to acquire skills immediately,” he said, adding that the MDC would also use grant money to provide professional development for faculty members who aren’t yet prepared to teach certain subjects. “We can’t do any of this without money. … The $2 billion is very much appreciated.”
The goal of the grants program, according to ED’s announcement, is to “prepare program participants for employment in high-wage, high-skill occupations.” Accomplishing that will require an expansion of higher education, particularly online courses.
The incentive to develop high-quality web-based content comes as two-year college officials are struggling to find ways to accommodate unprecedented enrollment spikes. Since the economy’s downturn in fall 2008, Americans have turned to two-year schools to boost credentials while they are unemployed or underemployed.
Many two-year campuses, including Bunker Hill Community College in Massachusetts and Ozarks Technical Community College in Missouri, have started late-night and early-morning class times as enrollment has risen over the past two years. Even with these policies, community colleges have struggled to keep pace.
“The big idea here for is for online [courses] to provide more capacity to serve more people and really fit the needs of displaced workers,” said Jim Hermes, director of government relations of the American Association of Community Colleges. “We need programs that will get people credentials faster than normal.”
The government’s grants program specifies “interactive software” that can “tailor instruction” for nontraditional students whose schedules don’t allow for in-person classes.
ED also advocates for multimedia software and simulations that can provide experiential learning and create a range of “open-source courses that can ultimately be shared and distributed nationwide”—a concept first explored at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) a decade ago, when officials there made lectures, syllabi, and other class materials free to anyone with a web connection.
Funding online programs that allow for self-paced learning, Hermes said, would make custom-made educational opportunities for adult Americans, not traditional college students who don’t have families to support during their education.
“If they’re not working right now, [students] might have the time to do a much more concentrated schedule … instead of going to class a few times a week,” Hermes said.
Open education advocates lauded the government’s TAACCCT program, even after the community college funding was reduced to one-sixth on the $12 billion discussed in legislative circles last year.
Cathy Casserly, CEO of Creative Commons, an organization that develops and supports the legal sharing on digital material, said the program “signifies a massive leap forward in the sharing of education and training materials.”
Casserly continued: “Resources licensed under [Creative Commons Attribution] can be freely used, remixed, translated, and built upon, and will enable collaboration between states, organizations, and businesses to create high-quality [open education resources].”
The deadline for TAACCCT applications is April 21.
- Research: Social media has negative impact on academic performance - April 2, 2020
- Number 1: Social media has negative impact on academic performance - December 31, 2014
- 6 reasons campus networks must change - September 30, 2014
Comments are closed.