More than a third of community college students have vanished in the United States

[Pats20]

We have a very robust community college here with several campuses.   At my son's high school, some teachers are dual employed.  Meaning, they are HS teachers, but also college professors who teach the CCP classes right at the high school.  My husband is a Police Captain and they do their ongoing training at the local campus where they also have a Police Academy.  I might be considered a "drop out" only because I took one class there just because I wanted to learn the topic.  Since my son has ADHD, his grades aren't the greatest.  When he considers going to college, one thing we talk about is going to the community college first and see if he can do better at that stage in life, then transfer.  But at the community college, they have other job training options in addition to traditional Associate degrees.

As for that article, I think the title/premise is misleading.  They didn't "vanish".  (Maybe I am too literal).  They just dropped out.  Or were drop-ins.  Maybe supplementing other education.  And are they looking at factors like local population size?  We are closing K-12 schools because enrollment is so much lower than it was 30 years ago.... and even lower than 50 years ago.  And do their community colleges offer trade school options?

I would LOVE it if they made community college free.  Although I also worry about how that would affect taxes.  I know a lot of people who don't have a degree mainly due to cost.  An Associate's degree could help.

“We are closing K-12 schools because enrollment is so much lower than it was 30 years ago.... and even lower than 50 years ago”


Where is this, and where are they going ? I understand that many districts have consolidated and built bigger schools to accommodate , but where is the decline in enrollment and why ?