Community colleges—educational institutions that provide post-secondary training through shorter programs than are offered at four-year universities—have been heralded as one of the great educational innovations of the 20th century. In the United States and Europe today, one- and two-year programs absorb at least half of all high school graduates and have played a crucial role in democratizing the education process.
Community colleges also address youth unemployment and labor market demands for better skilled workers, two emerging challenges in many countries of Latin America. However, the region is far behind the industrialized countries in developing diverse, quality programs for its growing post-secondary population, which includes many people previously excluded from higher education. Moreover, Latin American universities have rarely seen their missions as anything other than providing a broad academic education.
Might U.S. community colleges be a source of inspiration for Latin America's efforts to reach out to its new educational clientele?
A new book published by the Inter-American Development Bank—Community Colleges: A Model for Latin America?—explores how these schools could help meet the needs of the region's expanding and heterogeneous student population. Community colleges might also help address two other pressing educational issues in Latin America: the lack of alternative social mobility options for people unable to attend traditional universities, and the need for more relevant curriculum that emphasizes knowledge and skills better attuned to the job market.
The book promotes post-secondary educational options in Latin America by discussing the issues and obstacles from the North American experience in terms of financing, accreditation, prestige, transfer, and a regulatory and incentive framework. Editors Claudio de Moura Castro and Norma García caution, however, that while the U.S. community college experience yields insights that might benefit Latin America, “the appropriate response is not wholehearted duplication but selective adaptation.”
The explosion of demand for post-secondary education across socioeconomic lines in Latin America, coupled with the inability of traditional elite institutions to respond, pose some serious challenges and dilemmas to policymakers. Although some short-term post-secondary programs have been implemented in the region, for the most part they serve the least affluent and politically influential groups, so they often are shortchanged in the allocation of funds. Educators and ministries are left grappling to identify new approaches that involve accessible tuition levels and flexible schedules, as well as relevant course offerings and teaching methods that match student needs and capacities with opportunities—all characteristics of the community college model.
As de Moura Castro and García point out, community colleges fill a distinct market niche, cater to a clientele that is different from that of regular universities, and provide skills that can be immediately applied—and rewarded—on the job.