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Muscatine Community College students in Iowa may get to pursue bachelor's degrees. From left: Jake Siefers is majoring in psychology, Elexiana Oliva is majoring in criminal justice, Shiloh Morter plans to become an engineer and Jaylea Perez is pursuing psychology. Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report hide caption
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Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report
MUSCATINE, Iowa — The suspect moved menacingly toward her, but Elexiana Oliva stood her ground, gun drawn and in a half crouch as she calmly tried to talk him down.
The confrontation wasn't real, and neither was the gun. But the lesson was deadly serious.
Oliva is a criminal justice major at Muscatine Community College in this largely agricultural community along the Mississippi River. She was in a simulation lab, with that scenario projected on a screen as classmates watched, spellbound.
Oliva, 18, is determined to become a police detective, a plan that includes earning a bachelor's degree after she finishes her associate degree here. But she'll have to go somewhere else to do it — likely, in her case, to a university in Texas.
Oliva and her classmates here are among the 13 million adults of all ages across the country who live beyond a reasonable commute from the nearest four-year university, according to estimates by the American Council on Education, an organization representing colleges and universities.
It's a problem that's getting worse, as private colleges in rural places close, public university campuses merge or shut down and rural universities cut majors and programs as enrollment declines and budgets are cut.
"It's not our fault that we grew up in a place where there's not a lot of big colleges and big universities," Oliva said.
Expanding the role of community colleges
Iowa has joined a growing number of states that are considering letting community colleges like this one offer bachelor's degrees as a way of filling "higher education deserts" and training workers in rural places for jobs in fields where there are growing shortages. In other states, community colleges have already added four-year degrees.
Elexiana Oliva is a criminal justice major at Muscatine Community College in Muscatine, Iowa. Her goal is to become a police detective, so she must attend another university to complete her bachelor's degree. Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report hide caption
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Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report
"It would be a big game-changer," Oliva said, "especially for those who have a low income or a medium income and want to go and further our education."
About half of the states allow community colleges to offer bachelor's degrees. In Iowa, which is among the half that don't, lawmakers have commissioned a study to determine whether it should do so at the state's 15 community colleges. An interim report is due out soon.
A similar proposal in Illinois is backed by that state's governor, JB Pritzker, who has said the move would make it easier and more affordable for residents to get degrees — "particularly working adults in rural communities." Three-quarters of community college students in Illinois said they would pursue bachelor's degrees if they could do it on the same campus, according to a survey released by Pritzker's office.
Kentucky's legislature is considering converting one technical and community college into a four-year institution offering both technical and bachelor's degrees. Some Wyoming community colleges have also added a limited number of bachelor's degrees.
And in Texas, Temple College will open a center in June where students at the two-year public institution will be able to earn bachelor's degrees through partner Texas A&M University-Central Texas, including in engineering technology with a concentration in semiconductors. "When you can offer university classes on community college campuses, that makes a world of difference" to rural students, said Christy Ponce, the president of Temple, which is about halfway between Dallas and Austin.
At least one other Texas community college, Dallas College, is teaming up with Texas A&M University-Commerce, Texas Woman's University and the University of North Texas at Dallas to help students go on to get bachelor's degrees.
Distance a huge obstacle
What's been blocking many of these students from four-year degrees, Ponce said, "is the sheer distance. There's not a public university option within an hour or more away. And affordability and transportation barriers are huge issues."
The town sign of Muscatine, Iowa, an agricultural community hours away from public universities. Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report hide caption
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Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report
Fewer than 25 percent of rural Americans hold bachelor's degrees or higher, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, compared with the national average of 33 percent. And the gap is getting wider, the U.S. Department of Agriculture finds in its most recent analysis of this.
Citing the lack of nearby four-year universities as a principal reason, significantly fewer students in rural places than in urban areas believe that they can get degrees, according to a Gallup survey for the Walton Family Foundation. (The foundation is a financial supporter of NPR.)
In those states where community colleges already offer bachelor's degrees, they're often limited to certain high-demand fields, such as teaching and nursing. Even as this idea has spread, America's 960 public community colleges collectively confer only about 1 percent of bachelor's degrees each year, the American Association of Community Colleges reports.
Opposition from four-year colleges and universities
In many places, what's holding community colleges back is opposition from four-year institutions, many of which are increasingly hard up for students as the number of 18-year-olds begins to fall — a phenomenon enrollment managers have dubbed the "demographic cliff."
That Illinois proposal, for example, is stalled in committee after several public and private university presidents issued a statement opposing it. Negotiations are continuing.
While community colleges in California have been allowed since 2021 to offer bachelor's degrees, several have been blocked from adding four-year programs that the California State University System contends it already offers. An independent mediator has been brought in to resolve the impasse.
And while the two-year, public College of Western Idaho will launch a bachelor's degree in business administration in the fall, it's doing so only over the objections of Boise State University, which said it "could hurt effective and efficient postsecondary education in Idaho, cannibalizing limited resources available to postsecondary education and duplicating degree offerings."
Community colleges also need more students. Their enrollment declined by 39 percent from 2010 to 2021, according to the most recent available federal data. (Separate figures, from the private National Student Clearinghouse, show that enrollment rebounded in the fall, though that was thanks in part to high school students taking dual enrollment courses).
They also face that same impending demographic cliff. Those that add bachelor's degrees increase their full-time enrollment from 11 percent to 16 percent, research conducted at the University of Michigan has found.
Benefits for local employers
The principal impetus for the largely bipartisan push to offer bachelor's degrees at community colleges, however, is to train more workers for those fields in which there are labor shortages.
"What I think is misunderstood is that, in general, these are not like the baccalaureates that conventional four-year institutions offer," said Davis Jenkins, a senior research scholar at the Community College Research Center at Teachers College, Columbia University. (The Hechinger Report, which produced this story, is an independent unit of Teachers College.)
Bachelor's degrees at community colleges, said Jenkins, "meet an economic need for bachelor's degree graduates that isn't being met by other institutions."
That includes helping rural workers move up in their jobs without leaving home.
"It's all about serving our workforce needs," said state Rep. Taylor Collins, the Republican chair of Iowa's House Committee on Higher Education. "It's a way to upskill our workforce."
In his own district, south of Muscatine, "we're kind of on an island where we only have the community college," Collins said. "There are a lot of students who want to live locally" and not move away to get a bachelor's degree.
Shiloh Morter's goal is to become an engineer, but first, he is studying at Muscatine Community College. Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report hide caption
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Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report
At Muscatine Community College, which has an enrollment of 1,800, Shiloh Morter bikes to campus on all but the very coldest days. The 20-year-old plans to become an engineer, but "figured I would save the money and go to community college and try and branch out and develop better habits" first.
In the automotive technology garage off the main corridor of the small school, cars were lined up neatly with their hoods popped. Nursing students worked on anatomically correct, crash test dummy-style "patients."
Mykenah Pothoff, 20, enrolled at the college when it debuted a registered nursing program, saving herself money on tuition and a nearly hour-long drive, each way, to the University of Iowa. She also was worried about "just, like, finding my way around" the university, which has more than 30,000 students.
Jake Siefers, 32, is a psychology major planning to go on to get bachelor's and master's degrees. Siefers said he hopes to help other people who, like him, are recovering from alcoholism, and for whom he said there are too few services in Iowa. So he came home to Muscatine to start working toward an associate degree at the community college.
"I could afford it, and it was close and I actually know a lot of people that work here," said Siefers. "It's great coming in here and being, like, 'Hey, I went to high school with you, and you work in the office.' I mean, that's everyone in Iowa, right?"
If he could stay and get his bachelor's degree in Muscatine, "it would be huge."
"There's a lot of untapped human potential" in rural places, he explained, that could benefit from the kind of access to a higher education that is now more limited.
Letting students like them finish bachelor's degrees near where they live "would make it easier for everybody," said Jaylea Perez, 19, another psychology major who also plans to earn one.
Naomi DeWinter, the president of Muscatine Community College, sees the most potential among people already working, such as paraprofessionals in schools who want to become teachers. A state job board lists nearly 1,000 vacancies in Iowa for teachers.
Naomi DeWinter, president of Muscatine Community College, sees the most potential among people already working, such as paraprofessionals in schools who want to become teachers. Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report hide caption
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Mike Rundle for The Hechinger Report
DeWinter recalled a graduate so exemplary that he was featured in a promotional video, who after earning his associate degree started substitute-teaching while commuting in his free time to the University of Iowa to get his bachelor's degree — one course at a time.
"He said, 'That's how I'm juggling my work, my family and the affordability,' " she said. "His whole career is going to be over before he's a [full-time] teacher. I feel as though we failed him."
Like the substitute teacher, students said they want to stay in Muscatine, despite those limits. They like the peace and quiet compared with cities — hardly anyone ever honks, they noted — and the sense of community evident among the friends who run into each other shopping for groceries at the Hy-Vee.
"We don't have the best view of the Milky Way, but we for sure definitely don't have a bad one," said Shiloh Morter, ticking down a list of advantages to living on the sweeping plain, carpeted with cultivated fields and dotted with barns and silos. "And, yeah, the sunsets here are pretty nice. I can tell you, there's not a whole lot of other places that have clouds like we do."
This story about rural higher education and community college bachelor's degrees was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556 or [email protected].
