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Front Range applauds Biden's plan to help community college students

Funds to help low-income students
front range community college
The Front Range Community College Boulder County campus in Longmont. (Photo by Macie May)

President Joe Biden’s plan to make community colleges free nationwide is a good first step in helping low-income students get a degree, Andy Dorsey, president of Front Range Community College said this week.

“We appreciate President Biden’s recognition of the key role that community colleges play in providing access to higher education for all members of our community,” Dorsey said via email. “We absolutely support more financial assistance to help students attend college in the first place.”

FRCC  still has found that the most important tool to retain students and help them get their two-year degree — especially lower income students  — is to provide them support services that help them succeed once they’re in the classroom, Dorsey said.

“These services include advising, counseling, tutoring, internships, career guidance and job placement  — and they are proven to be effective,” he said. Biden’s efforts to bolster programs to keep students learning at community colleges will probably help more than offering them a free open door.

“President Biden’s other proposal to support student retention and graduation,” Dorsey said, “may actually help students more than free community college, and we hope Congress will take that proposal seriously.”

Dorsey said FRCC has been working hard to improve student services aimed at retention. But despite serving almost half of all undergraduates in the U.S., community colleges receive, by far, the lowest funding per student in Colorado and nationally, he said.

Community colleges nationally graduate only about a third of their students, Joan Oates, president of the nonprofit WorkingNation told the news site Chalkbeat. In Colorado, COVID-19 appears to have led to a 16% drop in community college enrollment among first-generation students and 14% among Pell Grant-eligible students from the previous year, Chalkbeat states.  

Biden’s proposal calls to award states $109 billion to provide two years of free community college, including for undocumented students who were brought to the United States as children, according to Chalkbeat.

Biden also wants to invest over $80 billion in Pell Grants for low-income students to use for expenses other than tuition such as housing, food and books, Chalkbeat states. He also calls for $62 billion to help retention rates at community colleges.

FRCC  — with an undergraduate enrollment of over 13,600  —  has four physical campuses including the Boulder County Campus in Longmont. At least 62% of the total FRCC enrollment is white and 23% is Latinx.

The Boulder County campus is home to the Center for Integrated Manufacturing and FRCC’s advanced manufacturing degrees. The campus also offers Fermentation Sciences, Geospatial Science and Teaching English as a Second Language. The top destination after students get their two-year degree from the Boulder County campus is the University of Colorado-Boulder and Metropolitan State University of Denver, according to FRCC’s website.

All campuses offer academic advising, personal counseling and stress management, services for military veterans, career counseling and TRIO Support Services for students who are the first in their family to attend college, come from a low-income households or have a documented disability, the website states.