Report: Community colleges are no longer affordable postsecondary education options for many families.
Kat Stein, Penn GSE Executive Director of Communications
katstein@upenn.edu / 215-898-9642
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PHILADELPHIA – A generation of strivers is being priced out of the most affordable rung of the higher education ladder, suggests a new report from the Institute for Research on Higher Education (IRHE) at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. The report examines the fraying of the community college safety net, and calls for states to address these challenges more directly.
“Higher education affordability was a major topic in the presidential election, and millennials, who are feeling the effects of high tuition, are not going away,” says Executive Director Joni Finney. “To create jobs and move our economy, our workers must have access to affordable education. This report provides insight into some of the questions and obstacles states must face in order to strengthen their community college systems. These systems form the backbone of the nation’s affordable higher education system.”
The analyses are drawn from College Affordability Diagnosis: A National Report and the state-by-state data released by IRHE this past spring. College Affordability Diagnosis is a project of the IRHE at the Graduate School of Education at the University of Pennsylvania, the Peabody College of Education at Vanderbilt University, and the Higher Education Policy Institute in San Jose, California. Notably:
The Institute for Research on Higher Education (IRHE), headquartered at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education, conducts research relevant to policymakers and educational practitioners on higher education. Founded over 30 years ago, IRHE’s unique examinations of the policy forces that shape higher education, as well as the Institute’s ability to publish and disseminate new understandings of the impact of these forces, are widely respected nationally.