Student Union
Limited Funds or No English? No Problem at Community Colleges
Community colleges -- sometimes seen as a lesser alternative for college students -- can get many students started on a more flexible and less costly path toward a degree.
These schools offer an associate’s degree in two years that is transferable to many four-year institutions for a bachelor’s degree. Once called junior colleges, they popped up in the U.S. around the turn of the 1900s.
The biggest draw of community colleges is their affordability.
While the average tuition at public four-year schools for the 2017-2018 academic school year was $26,261, and $46,014 at private institutions, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, those numbers understate the cost of many private competitive universities.
The most expensive four-year universities in the U.S. include Amherst College ($82,008) and Tufts University ($70,000), both in Massachusetts. Third runner-up is Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania ($60,872), according to their websites.
And that doesn’t include room and board, which, at Tufts, adds another $8,516 to the price.
But at community colleges, the average cost of a two-year school was $3,564, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Some community colleges in recent years have offered free tuition in Arkansas, California and Delaware.
“It's a gateway for many students to transfer to the university,” said Martha Parham, the senior vice president of public relations at the American Association of Community Colleges in Washington, D.C.
“If they take their first two years at community college, it's a significant cost savings. You know, as well as it's affordable, it's accessible, it's a great place to go,” she said.
While they are not as academically competitive as most four-year institutions, they offer students a chance to take courses that may not be related to their career aspirations, but are required, such as chemistry and algebra.
And for commuter, working and part-time students who live at home or off campus more cheaply than on campus, the savings is significant as they can attend classes at their pace and time of day.
The majority of students enrolled in community colleges work, Parham said.
About 80% of community college students have a job, with 39% working full time.
“It's an on-ramp to the middle class for many of our students who otherwise, you know, wouldn't have the same opportunity,” Parham said.
Other advantages include flexibility in scheduling and lower academic requirements. Community colleges are located, as their name implies, mostly in areas where there is a cluster of students who can access them more easily than other schools.
Students can attend a community college more easily while they work, tend to family or lack the means to move farther away to a school that offers room and board. The average age of a student in community college is 28-years-old, Parham said.
“I personally didn't feel ready enough yet to go off to a big university, because I just felt like I didn't have that structure to be able to go into a higher institution like that,” said Ella Paredes, a sophomore political science major at Miami Dade College in Florida.
Paredes, who commutes to community college from home, said she plans to transfer to Florida State University in Tallahassee for her bachelor’s degree after she graduates in Spring 2021 from Miami Dade College.
“My advice to students would be to work backwards and understand you know kind of your ultimate goal and then plan accordingly to make sure that the classes that you take, and the institution you attend, has those articulation agreements to ensure that you have a smooth transfer,” Parham said.
Alejandro Canas, a film production major, is going to be a sophomore in Spring 2021 at Santa Monica College (SMC) in California. In the meantime, he is taking his courses online from home in Jalisco, Mexico.
Community college is an American invention. The first was Joliet Junior College in Joliet, Illinois, which serves more than 30,000 students today.
It’s “something new, especially if you are from a different culture or from a country that is different. It's really important because you will expand your knowledge,” Canas said.
“You will see that community college is not just about studying, it's about expanding your experience, expanding your skills, and getting closer to different kinds of people you know,” he said.
Many community colleges, such as Santa Monica College and Northern Virginia Community College, have resources and courses available for students whose primary or first language is not English. Many community colleges don’t require English language skills for admission and will teach students based on their proficiency or lack of it.
Canas had about 60% proficiency in the English language when he began at SMC and credits his community college professors and available resources for helping him improve his English during his studies.
Community colleges offer tutoring, and teachers are prepared to help accommodate students who may be still learning English. Many community colleges have an English as Second Language (ESL) program centered around helping students whose first language is not English, according to the U.S. Department of State’s EducationUSA branch.
Only about 7.4% of the more than 1 million international students enrolled in U.S. institutions of higher education attend community colleges, according to the Institute for International Education. Most international students may not be aware of the advantages.
Many community colleges have articulation agreements with universities, meaning four-year schools have agreed to honor most if not all of the students’ credits.
“It's a great way for international students to come study in the United States, get their first two years of their degree done at a place with smaller class sizes, more affordable,” Parham said.
During the 2019-2020 academic school year there were 79,187 international students at colleges offering an associate's degree in the U.S., according to IIE.
The Houston Community College System has the largest number of international students among community colleges in the U.S., with 4,723 international students enrolled in the 2019-2020 school year.
China was the leading place of origin for international students attending community colleges, comprising 18.6% of international community college students in the 2019-2020 school year.
Vietnam was the second-leading place of origin, making up 10% of the total international community college student population.
Overall, however, international students at U.S. community colleges declined 8.3% from the previous academic year.
Parham points to the pandemic and recent federal travel restriction policies as explanation for the decline. For all international student enrollment at all U.S. institutions of higher learning, the decline for the 2020-2021 school year has been 43%, according to IIE.
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College athletes push for voter turnout while largely avoiding controversy as election nears
Lily Meskers faced an unexpected choice in the lead-up to the first major election she can vote in.
The 19-year-old University of Montana sprinter was among college athletes in the state who received an inquiry from Montana Together asking if she was interested in a name, image and likeness deal to support Sen. Jon Tester, a three-term Democrat seeking re-election. The group, which is not affiliated with the Tester campaign, offered from $400 to $2,400 to athletes willing to produce video endorsements.
Meskers, who is from Colorado but registered to vote in Montana, decided against the deal because she disagrees with Tester's votes on legislation involving transgender athletes in sports.
"I was like, OK, I believe that this is a political move to try to gain back some voters that he might have lost," Meskers said. "And me being a female student-athlete myself, I was not going to give my endorsement to someone who I felt didn't have the same support for me."
Professional athletes such as LeBron James, Colin Kaepernick and Stephen Curry have taken high-profile stances on hot-button topics and political campaigns in recent years, but college athletes are far less outspoken — even if money is available, according to experts in the NIL field. Being outwardly political can reflect on their school or endanger potential endorsement deals from brands that don't want controversy. It can certainly establish a public image for an athlete — for better or for worse — or lead to tensions with teammates and coaches who might not feel the same way.
There are examples of political activism by college athletes: A Texas Tech kicker revealed his support for former President Donald Trump on a shirt under his uniform at a game last week and a handful of Nebraska athletes a few days ago teamed up in a campaign ad against an abortion measure on the Tuesday's ballot.
Still, such steps are considered rare.
"It can be viewed as risky and there may be people telling them just don't even take that chance because they haven't made it yet," said Lauren Walsh, who started a sports branding agency 15 years ago. She said there is often too much to lose for themselves, their handlers and in some cases, their families.
"And these individuals still have to figure out what they're going to do with the rest of their lives, even those that do end up getting drafted," she added.
College coaches are not always as reticent. Auburn men's basketball coach Bruce Pearl has used social media to make it clear he does not support Kamala Harris, Trump's Democratic opponent in next week's presidential election. Oklahoma State football coach Mike Gundy once caused a stir with a star player for wearing a shirt promoting a far-right news outlet.
Blake Lawrence, co-founder of the NIL platform Opendorse, noted that this is the first presidential election in the NIL era, which began in July 2021. He said athletes are flocking to opportunities to help increase voter turnout in the 18-to-24 age demographic, adding that one of his company's partners has had 86 athletes post social media messages encouraging turnout through the first half of the week.
He said athletes are shying away from endorsing specific candidates or causes that are considered partisan.
"Student-athletes are, for the most part, still developing their confidence in endorsing any type of product or service," he said. "So if they are hesitant to put their weight behind supporting a local restaurant or an e-commerce product, then they are certainly going to be hesitant to use their social channels in a political way."
Giving athletes a voice
Many college athletes have opted to focus on drumming up turnout in a non-partisan manner or simply using their platforms to take stands that are not directly political in nature. Some of those efforts can be found in battleground states.
A progressive group called NextGen America said it had signed players in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Virginia to encourage voting among young people. Another organization, The Team, said it prepped 27 college athletes in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona and Michigan to lead volunteer voter participation opportunities for students. The organization also said it got more than 625 coaches to sign a nonpartisan pledge to get their athletes registered to vote.
The Team's executive director is Joe Kennedy, a former coach who coordinated championship visits and other sporting events at the White House during President Barack Obama's administration. In early October, it hosted a Zoom event during which panelists such as NCAA President Charlie Baker and WNBA players Nneka Ogwumike and Natasha Cloud gave college athletes advice about using their platforms on campus.
In its early days, The Team seized upon momentum from the record turnout seen in the 2020 election. The NCAA that year said Division I athletes could have Election Day off from practice and play to vote. Lisa Kay Solomon, founder of the All Vote No Play campaign, said even if the athletes don't immediately take stands on controversial issues, it's important for them to learn how.
"It is a lot to ask our young people to feel capable and confident on skills they've never had a chance to practice," Solomon said. "We have to model what it means to practice taking risks, practice standing up for yourself, practice pausing to think about what are the values that you care about — not what social media is feeding into your brain, but what do you care about and how do you express that? And how do you do it in a way that honors the kind of future that you want to be a part of?"
Shut up and play?
Two years ago, Tennessee-Martin quarterback Dresser Winn said he would support a candidate in a local district attorney general race in what experts said was very likely the first political NIL deal by a college athlete.
There have been very few since.
The public criticism and fallout for athletes who speak out on politics or social issue can be sharp. Kaepernick, the Super Bowl-winning quarterback of the San Francisco 49ers, hasn't played in an NFL game since January 2017, not long after he began kneeling during the national anthem at games.
Meskers, the Montana sprinter, said political endorsements through NIL deals could create problems for athletes and their schools.
"I just think that NIL is going to run into a lot of trouble and a lot of struggles if they continue to let athletes do political endorsements," she said. "I just think it's messy. But I stand by NIL as a whole. I think it's really hard as a student athlete to create a financial income and support yourself."
Walsh said it's easier for wealthy and veteran stars like James and Ogwumike to take stands. James, the Los Angeles Lakers star, started More Than a Vote — an organization with a mission to "educate, energize and protect Black voters" — in 2020. He has passed the leadership to Ogwumike, who just finished her 13th year in the WNBA and also is the president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association. More than a Vote is focused on women's rights and reproductive freedom this year.
"They have very established brands," Walsh said. "They know who they are and they know what their political stance is. They know that they have a really strong following that -- there's always going to be haters, but they're also always going to have that strong following of people who listen to everything that they have to say."
Andra Gillespie, an associate professor at Emory University who teaches African American politics, also said it is rare that a college athlete would make a significant impact with a political stand simply because they tend to have a more regional platform than national. Even celebrities like Taylor Swift and Eminem are better at increasing turnout than championing candidates.
"They are certainly very beneficial in helping to drive up turnout among their fans," Gillespie said. "The data is less conclusive about whether or not they're persuasive – are they the ones who are going to persuade you to vote for a particular candidate?"
Athletes as influencers
Still, campaigns know young voters are critical this election cycle, and athletes offer an effective and familiar voice to reach them.
Political and social topics are not often broached, but this week six Nebraska athletes — five softball players and a volleyball player — appeared in an ad paid for by the group Protect Women and Children involving two initiatives about abortion laws on Tuesday's ballot.
The female athletes backed Initiative 434, which would amend the state constitution to prohibit abortions after the first trimester, with exceptions. Star softball player Jordy Bahl said on social media that the athletes were not paid.
A University of Montana spokesperson said two athletes initially agreed to take part in the NIL deal backing Tester. The school said one withdrew and the other declined to be interviewed.
For Meskers, deciding against the offer boiled down to Tester twice voting against proposals to bar federal funds from going to schools that allow transgender athletes to play women's sports, a prominent GOP campaign topic. Tester's campaign said the proposals were amendments to government spending packages, and he didn't want to play a role in derailing them as government shutdowns loomed.
"As a former public school teacher and school board member, Jon Tester believes these decisions should be made at the local level," a Tester spokesperson said. "He has never voted to allow men to compete against women."
Meskers said she believes using influence as college athletes is good and she is in favor of NIL. She just doesn't think the two should mix specifically for supporting candidates.
"I think especially as student athletes, we do have such a big voice and we do have a platform to use," she said. "So I think if you're encouraging people to do their civic duties and get up and go (vote), I think that's a great thing."
