For hundreds of thousands of the nation's poor adults, community colleges have long delivered their best chance for gaining sufficient education and training to land a job that could break their dependence on welfare.

Literacy and technical programs, and those that lead to various certificates and degrees have given many on public assistance the extra oomph they need to become self-supporting.

But a year after passage of federal legislation limiting the educational options of welfare recipients, community colleges throughout the country are scrambling to ease the impact on current and potential students.

Employment now takes priority over education and training, meaning many will languish in dead-end and low-paying jobs, never to break the cycle of poverty, observers say. And early indications from several states reveal a steep enrollment drop for students on welfare.

"We firmly believe that educating for high-skilled, high-wage jobs is the way to keep people off welfare and help them have a more productive life," says Dr. Deborah L. Floyd, president of Prestonsburg Community College in the heart of Kentucky's Appalachian region. "We feel that while they are students, they should be allowed to have sufficient time to finish college. "

Prestonsburg and other community colleges in the state already have witnessed a drop in enrollments among low-income students. Last year, the college enrolled 353 students who also received public assistance. This year, the number has plunged to 147.

Officials say the decline is an early sign that welfare reform will come at a heavy price for residents of the poor Appalachian communities.

It's the same story in Wyoming, where educators worry that the state's get-tough stance on welfare is driving the neediest residents out of college and into the kind of low-paying jobs they went to school to avoid.

Grants managers and placement specialists at three of the state's seven community colleges say about 25 percent fewer low-income students took advantage of assistance programs this fall. Officials at the other colleges either reported a slight decrease, no change, or had no comparable figures.

"The big push here is not to get off welfare with education and training. It's to get off welfare by going to work," says grants manager Bonnie Fiedor at the Northern Wyoming Community College District in Sheridan.

One of the state's top welfare officials concedes that new state and federal policies have something to do with the drop from 367 college students receiving welfare benefits to eighty-two.

But Wyoming Department of Family Services Programs and Policy Division Chief Marianne Lee said the rules changes alone are not necessarily driving low-income students away from education.

"It's not black and white," Lee says. "The changes are not the only factor involved in any human circumstance. If we've learned anything out of welfare reform, it's that."

The welfare reform legislation approved by Congress last year set strict limits on eligibility for public funds. Able-bodied recipients now have a sixty-month lifetime limit on receiving benefits, and they must find work or enroll in programs that are preparing them for employment within a year.

The new law gives states flexibility to design their own welfare programs and many are still developing guidelines. Some allow or encourage job training and education programs and allow participants to meet work requirements by a variety of means. Others are far less favorable toward students.

Fighting the Fear

Regardless of the details, the new rules could force many community college students to drop out of school. Others who wish to pursue more education may be discouraged for fear the time restrictions will prevent them from completing the programs.

The issue is foremost on the minds of community college educators throughout the country, according to officials at the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC). Association officials have taken their concerns to Capitol Hill, advocating for the inclusion of work study, vocational education, and other programs as acceptable work options.

Last month, the association started publishing Welfare Watch, a monthly newsletter for college presidents that provides information on welfare-to-work grants, presents implementation strategies, and profiles model welfare-to-work programs around the country.

Dr. Brice Harris, who chairs a joint commission on federal relations for the association and the Association for Community College Trustees, led a workshop on the topic earlier this year. He says welfare reform has become one the greatest concerns of community college presidents in every state because the colleges are seen as primary providers of such services.

"We are noticing an increasing fear on the part of students because they don't know how the [state] regulations are going to shake out," says Harris, chancellor of the Los Rios Community College District in Sacramento.

"They think their only alternative is to go to work" and that education is no longer an option, Harris says. "A lot of students don't wait to have someone officially tell them what the policy will be."

That reality has put the onus on community colleges to act quickly and aggressively. At Los Rios colleges and other institutions, staff members are getting the word out that they are finding ways to accommodate all students who want to pursue higher education.

Working with local social services agencies, colleges are trying to get as many of their programs as possible onto approved lists. And they are squeezing programs into shorter time periods to allow students to meet time restrictions.

Additionally, they are applying for grants to fund scholarships, child care, and expenses for students who are otherwise motivated to complete their education.

In California, the challenge is great. Some 140,000 students, or 10 percent of all those who attend the state's 106 community colleges, are dependent on welfare benefits. Earlier this year, the state legislature awarded the community college system $65 million in extra funding to assist welfare recipients in the transition to employment.

However, officials say the money is inadequate for the task. They also complain that some degree programs -- and those that prepare students to transfer to four-year institutions -- may not qualify, according to Connie Anderson, the California Community Colleges' coordinator for CalWORKS, the state's welfare-to-work program.

"We're going to have to try real hard to package together programs with work study and work experience that will allow students to complete programs and meet work requirements," Anderson says. "Just how many students we're going to lose is hard to tell, but we're going to lose a lot."

Developing Viable Options

Elsewhere, officials in Kentucky already are tallying losses. In the eastern part of the state, isolated by poverty and the Appalachian mountains, several community colleges have witnessed enrollment declines of students on public aid.

For students who often have to start college in remedial or basic literacy courses, meeting the new time requirements and federal financial aid regulations that prohibit funding for the preparatory classes often pose insurmountable obstacles to their educational futures.

"We see ourselves as the educational advocate for these students. But when you can't tell a student that their aid will be available to them for a two- or three-year period, they cannot continue," says Dr. G. Edward Hughes, president of Kentucky's Hazard Community College. "We know that there is no way they can complete a nursing program and work twenty to thirty hours a week."

The new welfare requirements are even more onerous in Wyoming. The changes, which took effect July 1, are twice as stringent as the federal requirements. Wyoming residents receiving living assistance benefits must work forty hours per week, or spend that time looking for work or performing community service.

Wyoming is the only state, college officials say, that continued providing benefits to needy college students. However in order to qualify students must work at least thirty-two hours per week for ten of the sixteen weeks prior to the start of benefits.

The new summer work requirement appears to have kept some students on the job and away from college career exploration programs, says Kathleen Higgins of Western Wyoming College in Rock Springs.

Barbara Ochiltree at Casper College says of the eighty-one students she helped obtain federal grant assistance last spring, thirty-five did not return this fall.

Officials in Sheridan and Cheyenne, however, say the number of students taking advantage of federal funds available to low-income students and people entering fields traditionally dominated by the opposite gender has held steady.

Many who stayed in school are still getting food stamps and medical aid, Fiedor says. But she adds that few of them now qualify for Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the program that replaced Assistance to Families with Dependent Children.

At Eastern Wyoming College in Torrington, Dean of Students Billy Bates says he doesn't have conclusive figures but believes the school has lost several low-income students.

"I think they're just grabbing whatever job comes available," he says.

And because of the sluggishness of the Wyoming economy, Bates says he expects students that haven't acquired the training and education they need to land better jobs will end up back on the welfare rolls.

In Kentucky, Hazard hopes to create a family life transition center to act as the education broker for the area's neediest residents. The one-stop center would provide information on academic options, local social services and transportation agencies to make school more feasible for residents in the isolated mountain community.

That kind of response, and the malleable nature that has become the trademark of community colleges nationwide, should help ease the difficult transition from welfare to work, Harris says.

"If we are going to have a global economy and be a competitive workforce, we cannot leave people behind," he says,

Instead of losing potential students to welfare reform, his district aims to increase the number of welfare recipients who turn to the community college for help by as much as 50 percent.

"We're the only real edge these people have. I've never seen such a willingness on the part of a variety of agencies to cooperate for the benefit of the client," says Harris. "We're seeing people pull out all the stops to come up with viable solutions."

© Copyright 1997 by DiverseEducation.com
© Copyright 2007 by DiverseEducation.com

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