Iowa community colleges studying 4-year degrees

Iowa’s community colleges for 60 years have pursued a mission issued by the Legislature to provide educational opportunities, workforce training and community enrichment through two-year associate degrees, one-year certificates and continuing or high school-level academic programming.

But now some Iowa lawmakers have a question that could expand the reach of the campuses — disbursed across 15 districts covering every corner of the 99-county state: Could the taxpayer-supported community colleges better serve Iowa, its residents and its workforce by offering four-year bachelor’s degrees, too?

“There is unmet demand for baccalaureate education in specific disciplines, especially in rural Iowa and industries not adequately served by Iowa’s public and private four-year institutions,” Rep. Taylor Collins, R-Mediapolis, wrote in a recent letter to community college presidents and trustees, asking them to study the feasibility of four-year bachelor’s programs at Iowa’s 15 community colleges.

“Iowa’s community colleges are uniquely positioned to address gaps in workforce training and education by potentially offering baccalaureate degrees in select high-demand fields.”

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Community Colleges for Iowa, a nonprofit corporation that both serves and represents the state’s community colleges, promptly got to work — assessing what the change could mean for Iowa by looking, in part, at what it has meant for other states that have adopted similar missions.

“The most popular programs are business, nursing, computer science, education and other health professions,” Community Colleges for Iowa Executive Director Emily Shields told The Gazette about what her organization’s early findings have revealed about the 24 states that have authorized community college baccalaureate programs on some level.

“That really varies though — the level,” she said.

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Depending on the degree to which states have implemented community college baccalaureate programs, benefits have ranged from meeting workforce demands to improving degree attainment rates and expanding higher education opportunities.

“Leaders of numerous member institutions report (community college bachelor’s degree) graduates go on to enroll in graduate programs,” according to a 2024 report from the Community College Baccalaureate Association, a Florida-based group that says it’s “the nation’s only organization dedicated to promoting community college bachelor’s degrees.”

“As the number of community colleges conferring bachelor’s degrees increases, the types of degrees and programs (or fields) of study are growing as well.”

Education deserts

The rise of community college baccalaureate degrees started slow — with West Virginia kicking off the movement in 1989 and heavier hitters following, including Florida and Washington state.

Florida started in 2001 and reached full-scale adoption in 2021 — with all 28 of its community colleges offering bachelor’s degrees today. Washington, first authorizing community college bachelor’s programs in 2005, to date has approved 33 of its 34 campuses to confer some form of a four-year degree.

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In the 2010s, 11 states joined the mix — including nearby Missouri, Michigan and Ohio — bringing the total today to 24 states, according to the association.

“It's really around unmet need,” Shields said of the impetus for moving community colleges into a bachelor’s degree space historically dominated by public and private four-year institutions.

Consider geographic need, she said.

“There's a lot of talk about education deserts, which is the idea that if you're place bound, and you're not going to move to go to school, and you don't want to do online, is there somewhere to go to get a bachelor's degree within driving distance?” Shields asked. “If the answer is no, then you're in an education desert.”

Other needs community colleges can meet by offering bachelor’s degrees are programmatic-specific and workforce-related. If a state needs more nurses, more teachers, more information technology specialists or electricians, for example, community colleges can up the degree-earning workforce. Or they can meet student demands for niche programs not already available on university campuses.

Take, for example, Oakland Community College in Eastern Michigan — set between lakes Erie and Huron — which offers a bachelor’s in maritime technology that no one else within hundreds of miles has.

“They're on the lake and that makes sense for them,” Shields said. “So that's an example of the niche aspect.”

Given that community colleges traditionally — and often by state code — are more affordable than public and private four-year institutions, offering bachelor’s degrees on those lower-cost campuses could meet an affordability need as well.

“Maybe there is a private four-year option, but that's not seen as accessible because of affordability,” Shields said. “And so, while it might not be a complete desert, it might be one where there's a private college nearby, but (a student) can't afford to go there and so this provides another option. That was also some of the motivation.”

Iowa needs

As to Iowa’s specific needs and motivation for change, thousands of prospective students live in rural communities that sit hours from one of Iowa’s three public universities or its dozens of private universities — including Iowans on the far western side of the state or in the southeast corner.

“We know that there are many individuals who are geographically bound, or maybe they just don't want to leave their community to go get that education,” said Iowa State University assistant professor Jonathan Turk, whose research has focused on community college persistence and success. “And community colleges are called community colleges for a reason, right? There are more of them. They're spread out.”

Iowa also has growing workforce needs — especially in certain sectors like health care, food services and retail. Of the state’s top 10 jobs with openings as of Feb. 3, half are health-care related — like registered nurse, nursing assistant, physician and physical therapist.

With 51,298 job openings posted in Iowa as of Thursday, the most in-need entities include the University of Iowa, with 1,771 open jobs; UnityPoint Health, with 1,705 openings; and Trinity Health, looking for 1,369 more workers.

As to how more degree earners could address those shortcomings, a 2023 “workforce needs assessment” found “lack of qualified candidates” to be employers’ top impediment to filling job openings, followed by lack of applicants.

Given the question of qualified applicants, lawmakers are wondering whether Iowa’s community colleges hold the answer — given they already offer a range of associate degrees in many of the high-demand fields, like nursing, education, electronics engineering and physical therapy.

“I appreciate that the Legislature’s first step is to study this,” Turk said, noting he hasn’t done that for the state of Iowa specifically and so can’t say definitively that community college bachelor’s degree programs are the way to go. “But I think it's right to say that more than half of the other states are on to something, and have studied it in their context, and have said that, yeah, this is something that would help us meet our education and workforce demands.”

‘Unnecessary competition?’

Alongside the potential benefits are potential “challenges and considerations,” according to Community Colleges for Iowa, noting the question of impact to Iowa’s four-year colleges and universities and existing transfer agreements and degree partnerships that have evolved and expanded.

“That's going to be top of mind for us as we take a look at this,” Shields said, noting the Legislature’s request for an interim report by May 31 and a final report with recommendations by Oct. 31. “With the recommendations, we will really keep that at the front of our minds — because we have very strong partnerships with the regents.”

The University of Northern Iowa, in particular, launched a new “UNI at Iowa Community Colleges” initiative in 2022 allowing students who complete two years at a community college to finish their four-year degree at UNI online. The program is meant to remove geographic barriers for students in education deserts, financial barriers for those unable to afford UNI tuition and any other transfer complications that might keep students from earning a bachelor’s.

“Students who meet income and academic eligibility criteria (after completing a FAFSA or Free Application for Federal Student Aid) automatically receive Future Ready Scholarships, which cover the difference between community college and UNI tuition,” according to UNI, which got $4.2 million from the American Rescue Plan Act to develop the program and has asked lawmakers to appropriate another $1.6 million for the next academic year to expand it.

After launching the program, UNI — which has seen enrollment losses in recent years — reported a bump in transfer students, from 453 in 2021 to 600 in 2023, dipping back to 585 last fall.

“So there have been efforts to address these educational deserts through these partnerships, and we don't want to compete with any of that,” Shields said. “That's working, and our recommendation would not be to do anything that would undermine what is already working really well.”

With four-year institutions scrambling for a shrinking pool of potential students — given a looming enrollment cliff and changing demographics in Iowa — Shields said taking students from partner institutions is “not anything we're interested in doing.”

“So I think as we look at this that'll be top of mind, in terms of how do we meet unmet needs but not create unnecessary competition?” she said.

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In Cedar Rapids, Kirkwood Community College President Kristie Fisher also praised existing partnerships in considering the prospect of baccalaureate programs at the community college level.

“We have wonderful partners in the regents and the four-year privates right now for our students who are choosing to pursue our baccalaureate degree,” Fisher said, noting students for years have been asking for the option of four-year degrees on the Kirkwood campus.

“We've been hearing it for decades, but it's simply because students feel supported and a part of the campus when they're here,” Fisher said. “I'm confident that when they go on to their transfer institution, they feel supported and a part of that community as well. So while we hear it, it may just be because students love it here, and the thought of leaving makes them a little sad.”

The number of Kirkwood students who transferred to a four-year college or university dropped after the onset of COVID-19 and hasn’t totally rebounded — with 719 transferring to a public university and 103 transferring to a private in the 2022-23 academic year, down from 998 to a public and 176 to a private in 2018-19.

But the impact on Iowa’s four-year private and public colleges and universities was not among the considerations Rep. Collins asked community colleges to study in their investigation of four-year baccalaureate programs. The study, according to Collins, should:

Collins in his request for the study asked that a final report include:

Vanessa Miller covers higher education for The Gazette.

Comments: (319) 339-3158; vanessa.miller@thegazette.com