Study: Most Community Colleges
Not Fully Prepared for Demographic Shift
By David Pluviose

LONG BEACH, Calif.
A majority of community college presidents say they are only “somewhat prepared” for the rise of the “minority majority” student population, according to survey results released at the 86th American Association of Community Colleges convention last month.

With minorities outnumbering or posed to outnumber Whites in several states, many community college presidents are concerned about how to meet the educational needs of the rapidly growing minority student body. That concern was among many cited in “Community Colleges Today: The Presidents Speak,” a survey of 251 AACC-member college leaders on the most pressing issues their colleges face.

Minorities now outnumber Whites in California, Hawaii, New Mexico and Texas, while Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, and New York are next in line with minority populations of about 40 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

But, only 16 percent of community college leaders say they are “highly prepared” for America’s anticipated demographic shift, and 57 percent are “somewhat prepared” to meet the demands of this rising population. Ten percent say they are “not at all prepared,” while 16 percent say this phenomenon is “not relevant” to their institution.

Their chief concern — the lack of a diverse faculty that can educate the growing population of Hispanics who are fueling the demographic shift.

“The employees typically have one profile; the students have a different profile,” says Dr. Robert G. Templin Jr., president of Northern Virginia Community College. “If you look at community college faculty and administrators, they tend not to be drawn from the very populations that they’re serving.

“It’s no longer enough to have some Latino faculty. We need Latino faculty from Mexico, Central America, parts of South America, because those cultures are different — just as with Africans and African-Americans,” Templin says. “Our metrics of how we measure diversity among our faculty are out of date.”