Ivy Tech’s diverse student base includes everyone from students looking to move on to four-year schools to convicts working toward rehabilitation. Cathie Rowand | The Journal Gazette
Karen Francisco, The Journal Gazette
kfrancisco@jg.net
A sea change is under way on Indiana's post-secondary front - a concerted push to make the state's fledgling community college system the gateway for college freshmen in Indiana.
It's happening just as Ivy Tech Community College struggles with booming enrollment, reduced state financial support and a mission growing to encompass programs to serve first-year students, every high school in the state, prison inmates and displaced workers. And all of that in addition to the long-standing vocational and technical programs at the college's heart and soul.
Most alarmingly, it comes just as new research reveals that bright, talented students "undermatched" with a community college are as much as 36 percent less likely to go on to earn a four-year degree than similar students who start at a four-year institution.
"If a student wants a (bachelor's) degree and can get in to a four-year college to begin with, that's what the student should do, because the price of starting at a two-year college - in terms of an ultimate completion rate for the B.A. - is high," according to William Bowen, president emeritus of Princeton University and co-author of "Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Universities."
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