To minimize potential loan burdens, many students from low-income families opt to attend less expensive community colleges rather than four-year institutions. In a recent report titled The Policy of Choice, the Institute for Higher Education Policy concludes that “the lowest-income dependent students were more likely to attend public two-year institutions and proprietary institutions than (were) the highest-income dependent students.”

While community colleges provide a vital option, that enrollment pattern has a downside. Researchers have found that community college students are far less likely to earn a four-year degree than those who start out at a four-year college.

In a 2002 report titled Access & Persistence, the American Council on Education (ACE) says that 57 percent of students who started at four-year institutions in 1989-90 with the intention of earning a bachelor’s degree had earned that degree by 1994. In contrast, only 8 percent of freshmen at two-year institutions in 1989-90 had earned bachelor’s degrees by 1994.

Michael McPherson, president of Macalester College in Minnesota and a leading expert on financial aid, says: “If your aim is a bachelor’s degree, the probability that you will do that is a lot lower if you start at a two-year college.” Though he and other experts acknowledge that community colleges are a good fit for many students and even the best choice for some, McPherson adds: “A lot of low-income students go to two-year colleges not because they want to, but because that’s all they can afford. What we really want is for everybody to go to the school that is most suitable for them.”

Suitable or not, community college defines higher education for millions of today’s students. In fact, nearly half of the nation’s 13 million undergraduates — many of them adults who are enrolled part time — attend public, two-year institutions.

These enrollment trends, coupled with the low rates of transfer from two-year to four-year schools, have many experts clamoring for a system better tailored to meet students’ needs.

Consultant John Lee, who has worked with the Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance, explains that community college students often juggle work and college attendance and live at home to save money. “Life forces pull a lot of them out of college,” he says. And even those who stay in and succeed at community colleges face difficulty when they try to transfer to a four-year school. Too often, they find that their community college credits won’t transfer to their bachelor’s program, forcing them to spend more time and more money to earn a four-year degree. This articulation problem, say experts, is just one obstacle these students face.

Paul Lingenfelter, executive director of the State Higher Education Executive Officers organization, also cites the lack of communication that frequently exists between community colleges and four-year institutions.

“Developing strong counseling programs that bridge the institutions is just as important as getting the systems lined up in terms of transferability and course numbering,” says Lingenfelter. “I think we have fallen down more on the counseling than on the mechanics.”