Washington Monthly - September/October 2019 - 37

of those, only 42 percent completed their degree within six
years-just 13 percent of the original group. Transfer and graduation rates are especially low for African American, Native
American, Hispanic, and low-income students, who are significantly more likely to attend community college than white
middle- and higher-income students. Studies of community college transfer consistently show disproportionately low
odds of earning a bachelor's degree for minority students,
especially African Americans and Hispanics, a phenomenon
that researchers call the "racial transfer gap."
Curry doubts that she would have continued her education if she could not have stayed at Green River. Figuring out
where and how to transfer would have been too time consuming, and no option would have been as convenient. She
also knew that she would lose the support of the faculty, advisers, and peers who helped her succeed during her first two
years. "If I hadn't been at Green River and been able to continue right on," she says, "I would never have gotten a bachelor's degree."
Better leveraging the country's network of 941 public community colleges to offer baccalaureate programs like
the one that moved Curry from unemployed single mom to
a program manager at Microsoft may seem uncontroversial.
But while twenty-five states technically permit community
colleges to award bachelor's degrees, Washington and Florida are the only ones that allow it to happen at scale, rather than in a narrow set of subjects and circumstances. As a
result, only 121 community and technical colleges around
the country allow students to complete a bachelor's without
transferring, and two-thirds of such graduates in 2017 came
from programs in Florida and Washington.
Why? Overwhelmingly, the opposition in other states
comes from public four-year universities. Allowing more institutions to deliver bachelor's degrees upends a status quo
that gives state universities a monopoly on public baccalaureate education and supplies them with a steady stream of
transfer students. As a result, when states consider following
the example of Washington and Florida, public universities
lobby hard against it.
But data from both states should dispel concerns that
the programs are siphoning off students who would otherwise
enroll in a public university. Recent analysis from Washington
shows that the graduates look more like traditional community college students: they are older than university students,
with an average age of thirty-two, and are more racially and
economically diverse. The same is true in Florida, where state
department of education data indicates that three out of four
students enrolled in community college bachelor's programs
are from underserved populations. In other words, many students who get a bachelor's degree from a community college
wouldn't otherwise have gotten it from a public university;
they just wouldn't have gotten one at all.
More research is needed, but the early evidence suggests that expanding baccalaureate programs at community
colleges could go a long way toward increasing the share of

Americans with degrees and addressing racial and class disparities. Study after study points to the economic and social
value of bachelor's degrees and to the vulnerability of Americans without them. Since the Great Recession, almost 75 percent of new jobs have gone to bachelor's degree holders. Creating more opportunities for Americans to experience those
benefits could be as simple as letting more college students
finish where they start.

T

he push to let Washington's community and technology colleges grant bachelor's degrees began in 2001, as
part of a broader effort to increase degree attainment
across the state. College leaders were particularly concerned
about the lack of transfer opportunities for students completing "associate of applied science" (AAS) programs. These
occupationally focused degrees, popular with many adult and
first-generation students, are designed to help students move
directly into the labor market, not into a four-year university.
But as the educational requirements of jobs increased, graduates of AAS programs needed more ways to advance their
careers. In 2005, the Washington legislature authorized four
pilot "bachelor's of applied science" programs that would provide a seamless pathway for AAS graduates to move onto a
career-focused bachelor's degree without needing to transfer.
In 2010, the pilots were deemed successful enough that
the state extended them and created a process for approving
additional programs in fields with unmet student or labor
market demand. The lion's share of programs are in health
care, business, and information technology. Today, twentyeight of the system's thirty-four colleges offer or are approved and getting ready to offer bachelor's degrees, with
110 programs in total.
While the largest baccalaureate programs in Washington are in the Seattle area, a growing number are offered
in more rural parts of the state, often in fields like education, health care, and business, which are critical to sustaining local economies. Centralia College, for example, a ninetyminute drive from Seattle, feels a world away from the fastpaced, youthful, and crowded urban center. Like many small
communities, Centralia is struggling to recruit and retain
teachers. And while the town is home to the state's longest
continuously operating community college, there are no
four-year institutions there. Residents interested in becoming a teacher used to have three primary options: they could
enroll in nearby St. Martin's University, a private, Catholic
school with an annual tuition of over $38,000; go to the University of Washington-Tacoma, which is more affordable but
requires an hour-plus commute each way; or sign up for a fully online program.
At the urging of the county school superintendents,
Centralia College sought approval from the state to offer a
bachelor's of applied science in K-8 education and special education. The request was approved in 2015, and the college
began accepting applications in the winter of 2017. The response exceeded expectations, confirming what many in the
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Washington Monthly - September/October 2019

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