Budget cuts to community colleges highlights the fact that as a society we were never fully committed to remedial students in the first place. Young people and adults who have been criminalized and imprisoned are ineligible for loans, and cannot afford college to turn their life around. These cuts target the working poor, undereducated, and disadvantaged and are a threat to our democracy.
In this editorial, Kevin Carey, policy director of think tank Education Sector, argues that colleges are not fulfilling their mission to students: costs are rising and students are not learning (or even graduating). He argues for transparency and studies of the effectiveness of teaching and learning, and warns of the education-related lobbies that keep the rest of us in the dark about higher education. (Kevin Carey in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas, Issue #15, Winter 2010).