2 Steps Companies Can Take to Understand Community Colleges

The Community College Footprint

Community colleges have an enormous footprint in United States higher education. According to the American Association of Community Colleges, in the fall of 2017, 12M students were enrolled across over 1K community colleges in the United States. At the time, this represented 41% of all undergraduates in the U.S. That's a lot of students! So what percentage of community college revenue comes from tuition?

Of the $60B in revenues earned by community colleges in 2016, 

32.8% came from state funding

27.8% from tuition

19.9% from local finding

11.3% came from federal funding

8.3% came from other sources

According to the same report, in 2016-2017 U.S. community colleges awarded over 829K associate degrees and 459K certificates. This is a very active marketplace deeply engaged with local communities spread across the entire country. So how do companies begin to understand how to work with community colleges?

Step 1: Understand the Research

There are great research organizations focused on community colleges. Columbia University’s teacher’s college hosts one of them: 

• Community College Resource Center (CCRC). One recent research paper from CCRC explores the new instructional and curricular approach “CUNY Start” at the City University of New York. This initiative was developed to improve outcomes for students who tested into developmental math.
• Achieving the Dream (ATD) also produces detailed resources that explain the present state of community colleges. ATD recently published a guide to help community colleges integrate resiliency into their curriculum. 
• League for Innovation in the Community College. Their Innovations webpage highlights both national and college-specific stories.

These organizations dedicated to community colleges provide case studies that detail innovative initiatives driving this area of higher education forward. This research is focused on specific areas of institutions and can definitely help you understand the high level challenges that need solving. 

Step 2: Understand the Leaders

To understand the challenges and opportunities facing community colleges today in detail, connecting with influential leaders in the community college market is key. As you can imagine, these are exceedingly busy people and face time with them is hard to get. But if you can connect with community college chancellors and presidents, you will be able to truly understand how your business can help support this important area of higher education.

When meeting community college leaders face to face: 

• Talk to them to see if your product or service is a good fit locally and nationally
• Learn from them what drives student success in community colleges
• Hear from them if your messaging and positioning is on target to engage decision makers. 

Face time with a group of diverse community college leaders is the ultimate market research experience for education and technology companies hoping to build partnerships in this area of higher education. So where do you go to find this resource? You come to HERDI®. 

HERDI

I have been leading HERDI now for over 12 years. I was previously a vice chancellor and president at community colleges in Virginia and New York. HERDI was established to provide a forum for meaningful dialogue between business leaders, Presidents and Chancellors of key community colleges across the country. 

HERDI provides clients with three hour focus groups with community college leaders. To learn more about HERDI, visit our website or download our infographic below, which highlights our capabilities. 

If you are a business leader looking to work more closely with community colleges, please reach out. We’d love to hear what you’re working on, share some client stories and provide the latest details of our services at HERDI.