2-year community colleges on the rise

Richard Zhang

In a recent article in the NYTimes, Tamar Lewin discovers that enrollment in 2008 is at a record high. What drove this record was the increasing amount of high school graduates going to 2-year community colleges. These students, who usually would have been high school drop outs, are believed to go to school fueled by the inaccessibility of jobs and the negativity of being branded as a high school drop out. Although the changes in dropout rates between 2007 and 2008 is small, only about 1%, the recent trend is on the decrease. However enrollment in 4 year colleges remains flat at 8 million. This is good in terms of higher education because the more and more citizens are receiving a secondary education.

However, this would mean that there will be more competition for regular college students. With enrollment numbers sharply on the rise, the competition is intense. 2008 hits a record mark in college enrollment rate. A number of national university reported record number of applications. Students are having a harder time entering the college of their dreams. Many students are taking record AP's from their high school in hoping that it will give them an edge when applying for college. It used to be that 1 or 2 AP's is considered adventurous and 3-5 AP's is considered overachieving. Now, however, 8-9 is not out of the norm, some even reaches 15 or above in the number of AP's. Yet many still attend state funded schools that cost less, and avoiding lower ranking colleges to obtain the best education in this economy. d