Two-Year College: Few Frills but Low Bills

When Veronica Ruibal returns to class at Nassau Community College this month, she’ll be training at one hospital, working nights at another, battling Long Island traffic to shuttle her toddler to day care and, she hopes, finding a few spare moments for her husband.

The 25-year-old full-time student smiles wearily at the thought. “I know,” she says. “It’s a lot.”

But so is the payoff: an associate’s degree Ruibal hopes will land her a higher-paying job as a technician in radiology.

When 14 million undergraduates surge onto college campuses this fall, 44% will be at the country’s 1,132 community colleges like Nassau.

The publicly supported two-year schools started out as a handful of junior colleges just over a century ago, then exploded after World War II to offer baby boomers a lower-cost education closer to home. A generation later, they’re serving baby boomers’ children.

Community college enrollment will increase 12% to 14% over the next five to 10 years as a result of the baby boom “echo,” said Jacqueline Woods, the Department of Education’s chief liaison to community colleges.

For Ruibal and students like her, community college means affordable but few-frills learning. At Nassau there are no dorms or fancy fraternities, but there are 4,000 parking spaces and day care on a sliding scale. Most community college students live within an hour’s drive of their campuses and also work.

The schools promise lower tuition and open admission that puts higher education within easier reach of more students, from teenagers just out of high school to retirees.

The average tuition at public, four-year universities in 1999-2000 was $3,356, according to the College Board, which administers the SAT. Out-of-state tuition averaged $8,706, and four-year private college tuition averaged $15,380.

The average at two-year public institutions: $1,627.

The first junior colleges were created in the 1890s to provide the first half of the four-year college course. In 1900 there were eight two-year colleges; by 1950 there were 648.

The notion of a two-year college got a makeover after World War II as higher education came to be considered a right, not just a privilege. Alongside four-year schools furiously adding dormitories and faculty, community colleges rose to help meet demand.

Today they offer two-year degrees, corporate training and retraining, and noncredit courses. Among students of traditional college age, 20% transfer to four-year institutions.

Nassau Community College was part of the boom when it opened in a courthouse in 1960 with about 700 students.

Today its enrollment is 20,000. Its growth can be traced in the architecture of the former Air Force base it now occupies about 30 miles east of Manhattan: aging red brick from the military days, massive ‘70s-era concrete structures and newer classrooms behind walls of blue glass.

Many of its students, like Ruibal, are there for technical skills; 63% go on to four-year schools.

Brian Leiba, a 24-year-old criminal justice major in his second year at Nassau, plans to apply to four-year colleges this fall with the goal of earning a law degree.

“Now I feel I’ve been groomed,” said Leiba, a Marine with a 3.65 grade point average who was elected student body president. “I was able to brush up on a lot of things that I had forgotten.”

Statistically, he also has a better shot at completing a bachelor’s degree.

Federal studies find that 71% of students who transfer with at least a semester at a community college will complete a bachelor’s degree by age 30. That tops the 68% who earn degrees after starting at a four-year school, said Clifford Adelman, senior research analyst at the Department of Education.

Administrators cite such figures to rebut assumptions that open admission means lower standards. The individual programs can be rigorous: Ruibal needed a semester of prerequisite courses plus an interview to gain entry to the allied sciences program.

Even though Ruibal’s tuition is lower than those of the nearest state colleges, it’s still a challenge.

Her husband supports his family of three driving a truck. Her work covers the $125 weekly day care fee. A federal Pell Grant covers about half of her $2,200 annual tuition.

Mornings she drives 45 minutes to campus from home in Amityville, drops 2-year-old Idalis at day care, then drives five minutes more to her unpaid internship. Eight hours later, she reverses the trip and goes to her night job clerking in a hospital emergency room.

Some days she ends up wearing both hospital uniforms: whites on top for the daytime internship, blue scrubs underneath for the emergency room.

Ruibal said she found only low-paying jobs after graduating from high school in 1993, though she admits she was looking more for fun at the time.

Today it’s the future that catches Ruibal’s attention. She wants to buy a house, take her daughter to Disney World and set up a small college fund for her child.

“Community college symbolizes what American democracy is all about--opportunity, equality, advancement, choices,” says George Vaughan, a former community college president who teaches at North Carolina State University.

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On the Net:

Nassau Community College: https://www.sunynassau.edu

American Assn. of Community Colleges: https://www.aacc.nche.edu

The College Board:

https://www.collegeboard.org