Strengthening Rural Community Colleges: Innovations and Opportunities

Community colleges across the country are plagued with tight budgets--caused in part by state disinvestment and chronic federal underfunding. For rural community colleges, these challenges are even more acute, as their needs are greater and the costs of providing services higher. The COVID-19 pandemic has only deepened the prosperity gap between rural and non-rural communities. As classes moved online, rural colleges struggled to reach and retain students with no access to the Internet or to personal computers necessary to do coursework. Rural community colleges also reported trouble recruiting new students, as their pre-pandemic recruitment relied on taking advantage of in-person venues such as local clubs, churches, and high school football games. Without local television or radio stations, and with in-person events cancelled, many rural colleges have been left with few methods to promote their services. While in much of the country the community college sector struggles with the stigma of being associated with sub-par education, or being a "back-up choice," rural community colleges must overcome an additional obstacle, not of convincing students to enroll in a community college, but to enroll in college at all. Rural students are more likely than their urban and suburban peers to be first-generation,6 and may see the prospect of immediate employment as more appealing and less stigmatized than attending college. There is a strong perception in many rural communities that college is for "others." To better understand the role that community colleges play in supporting the vitality of rural communities, from October 2019 to December 2020 the Association of Community College Trustees (ACCT) visited rural campuses and conducted interviews virtually and in person with over 500 individuals across five states: California, Kentucky, Iowa, North Carolina, and Texas. Although no tribal colleges are located in any of the five states studied, ACCT also met with six tribal college presidents from North Dakota and Montana to learn the ways in which experiences of tribal colleges are both unique and similar to those of rural community colleges. ACCT interviewed college trustees, presidents, faculty and staff from 70 colleges and met with individuals representing 86 different organizations in a diverse range of sectors, from broadband advocacy to workforce investment boards, to food banks and local and state education agencies. ACCT also interviewed 44 state legislators and met with governors' and lieutenant governors' offices in each state. During these conversations, the most frequently cited challenges were access to high-speed Internet, funding inequities, and meeting students' basic needs particularly in mental health. This report will analyze these three challenges, highlight programs in each state that are working to overcome these challenges, and offer policy recommendations to bolster the solutions colleges know work in the interest of ensuring viability and vitality of the nation's rural community colleges for the future.