Let competition in AZ higher ed rip
ASU entering the associate degree business should trigger a lifting of all restrictions on the community colleges offering four-year degrees.
Arizona State University wants to experiment with offering associate degrees, heretofore the province of the state’s community colleges. The Board of Regents, which oversees the state’s three research universities, seems gung ho about the endeavor.
This can easily be seen as retaliation for recently passed legislation partially permitting the community colleges to offer four-year bachelor's degrees. And a source of deterrence for the community colleges moving too aggressively into the four-year degree business, previously the exclusive province of the research universities. If you move into our space, the message could be, we can move into your space.
Whatever the motivation, which is probably mixed, I’m all for ASU exploring offering associate degrees. If ASU can offer an associate degree that is regarded as better or more valuable than those offered by the community colleges, that’s a beneficial option for students.
But ASU’s move should trigger the legislature lifting all the restrictions on community colleges offering bachelor's degrees. Let competition in public higher education rip.
The community colleges, particularly in Maricopa County, face severe restrictions on their ability to offer four-year degrees. The number they can offer and the tuition they can charge are both capped. They are supposed to avoid duplicating degree programs offered by the research universities and consult with them before launching bachelor's offerings, although the research universities don’t have a formal veto.
The Maricopa Community Colleges have announced their first forays in offering four-year degrees. There are just a handful and they are highly specialized.
That’s not what the students in Maricopa County need and deserve. ASU’s quasi-monopoly on bachelor's degrees is one of the biggest obstacles to improving educational attainment in the Phoenix metro area.
President Michael Crow deserves much credit and appreciation for transforming ASU from a party school into the top tier of large, public research universities. But, pace Crow and his New American University credo, not every student wants, needs, or benefits from a research university experience. In fact, most don’t. Yet, in Arizona, to get a four-year degree, a student has to pay at least a year, and usually several more, of research university tuition.
Other states, such as California, have a two-tier system of public higher education. There are research universities and what are known as state colleges. The state colleges offer a lower-cost path to a bachelor's degree on a campus less devoted to research and more devoted to teaching.
In Arizona, our community colleges are well positioned to serve this state college function, as recognized by the recently passed legislation allowing them to offer some four-year degrees. And in the rural counties, there are not the same restrictions placed on Maricopa County community colleges in playing that role.
From a policy standpoint, this makes no sense. Maricopa County is the place where a robust, lower-cost state college system as an alternative to the research university is most needed and would serve the largest student population. The community colleges here are spread throughout the Valley and offer more comfortable and student-focused environments.
As a matter of political economy, the role of a college degree in job credentialing needs to be sharply diminished. Universities and colleges are hugely inefficient ways of preparing young adults for white-collar jobs. And they have become much too much indoctrination factories for woke ideology.
But so long as a college degree remains a prerequisite for a wide swath of white-collar jobs, the path to obtaining one should be as direct and inexpensive as possible. In Arizona, that means allowing community colleges to offer four-year degrees to the full extent that there is a market demand for them. And even in direct competition with the research universities. In fact, particularly in direct competition with the research universities.
This could also be liberating for our research universities, although they and the regents seem preoccupied with protecting and enlarging market share. If the community colleges evolved into a state college system, that would satisfy the state constitutional requirement that a college education be made available as nearly free as possible. That would enable the state’s research universities to charge true research university tuition, rather than being caught in an in-between level: Too high to be considered affordable, much less as nearly free as possible. Too low for the value of the research university experience being offered.
Students would benefit enormously, and the metro area considerably, from wider choices and competition in public higher education, for degrees of all kinds.
Reach Robb at robtrobb@gmail.com.