Gates Foundation boosts aid to community colleges

For years, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle has pushed high schools to work harder to graduate more students.

Now it is prodding community colleges, which educate about half of the nation's college students, to pay more attention to their graduation rates, too.

Melinda French Gates, speaking Tuesday at the American Association of Community Colleges conference in Seattle, said the foundation estimates that only 25 percent of students who enter community college leave with a diploma or certificate.

While acknowledging that number is controversial because many community-college students don't intend to earn a degree, she said there's agreement that the number needs to rise.

And at the conference Tuesday, six national organizations representing nearly 1,200 community colleges signed a commitment to increase student-completion rates to 50 percent over the next decade.

"Community colleges led the way with college access," Gates said. "I really think now is the time to have the conversation about college completion."

Gates said she and her husband, Bill Gates, are often moved by the sacrifices many community-college students make to get an education. She talked about a North Carolina man she met who works all night, goes to school all morning, and sleeps just a few hours in between.

"We owe them the same tenacity in return," she said.

She pledged another $57 million to help community colleges improve remedial classes, which about 60 percent of community-college students take.

In the foundation's view, she said, the best way to raise graduation rates is to help students get through remedial classes more quickly and cheaply, before they run out of money or get discouraged.

The foundation has already given about $53 million to such efforts, including about $5.3 million in Washington state.

Gates singled out Washington state's I-BEST program, started in 2004, as an example of the kind of innovative program that the Gates Foundation wants to expand.

I-BEST, which stands for Integrated Basic Education and Skills Training, are classes that combine remedial and college-level work, so that students finish much faster than if they had to do the remedial work separately. A recent study showed that students in I-BEST classes earn a certificate at much higher rates than their peers.

Community colleges became a major focus of the Gates Foundation in November 2008, when it shifted its education giving.

In the high-school arena, the foundation moved away from breaking up big schools into smaller ones, and focused more on defining and rewarding effective teaching. At the same time, it expanded its education giving into community colleges, largely because that's where so many college students are.

Community colleges, she said, serve about 11 million students.

"The line between the haves and the have-nots runs right through your institutions," Gates said.

Local community-college leaders said Tuesday that they welcome the attention they're receiving from the Gates Foundation and President Obama, who has also mentioned Washington's I-BEST program in some of his speeches, and proposed putting an additional $12 billion of federal money into community colleges, which Congress later cut to $2 billion.

"It's wonderful to be in the spotlight," said Jill Wakefield, chancellor of Seattle's four community and technical colleges.

Although community colleges have and will always believe in providing access to everyone, she said, "we're realizing that access doesn't just mean getting in the door."

Seattle Community Colleges estimate that about 50 percent of their students earn a degree or certificate.

Charles Earl, executive director of the Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges, said Washington state community colleges are already working to improve student outcomes. Over the past few years, for example, the colleges have undertaken a number of efforts to increase the number of students who complete basic-skills classes, finish remedial work, and complete degrees.

From 2007 to 2009, for example, the number who complete a certificate, degree or apprenticeship has jumped 11 percent, he said.

Linda Shaw: 206-464-2359 or lshaw@seattletimes.com