Many colleges are also offering block scheduling to help cut students’ energy costs. Brevard Community College (Florida) now operates on a four-day work week, which has had mixed reviews. Some students are happy to have a day off, while others find it difficult because the longer classes mean less time to handle daily responsibilities, college officials said. J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College (Virginia)also uses a form of block scheduling to cut the cost of commuting for students. Under its Fuel Smart Fridays program, students come to campus once a week and can still earn a full load of credits. The program operates on a 16-week semester.

Among students who begin in a two-year college, only 12 percent of underrepresented minority students and 16 percent of other students transfer to a four-year institution. Among transfers, only 55 percent of the minorities and 61 percent of other students earn a bachelor’s within six years of transferring. In sum, then, only about seven percent of minority students—and 10 percent of nonminority students—who begin in a two-year college earn a bachelor’s degree from any institution in these large systems within 10 years of starting college. These rates are far lower than for students who begin even in nonselective four-year colleges.

We can’t afford to waste this much talent. Indeed, a recent report from the independent, congressionally chartered Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance painted a stark picture of the consequences of current attendance patterns. According to the committee’s calculations, the combination of three forces—the increasing cost of college, insufficient need-based grant aid, and an enrollment shift among college-qualified students toward the two-year sector—resulted in a loss of between 1.7 and 3.2 million bachelor’s degrees over the last decade.