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Lack of options, lack of alternatives, call it what you will. It has less to do with UDC being a HBCU and more to do with the only alternatives being private and OOS public colleges.
Many students have no desire to attend college in the city they’ve always lived in – approximately 2/3 of freshmen are enrolled in four-year colleges more than 50 miles from home, according to the most recent CIRP/HERI survey, and approximately 1/2 attend colleges more than 100 miles away. If you grew up in Raleigh, you can go to UNC Asheville or UNC Wilmington to move hours away to the mountains or beach while still getting in-state tuition. Not so for those in DC. The DCTAG program helps mitigate that.
Any place that isn’t within ~90 minutes of a public university or cc probably also is underserved by many other public facilities (for health care, transportation, etc.) This is a drawback to living in remote areas.
Maybe there is overlap between USDA “food deserts” and higher education deserts?
Toole County UT for example is a USDA food desert tract. Much of the county is covered by actual desert (the Great Salt Lake Desert). However, there appears to be a community college located within 21 miles of the county seat. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-access-research-atlas/go-to-the-atlas/
There are over 1000 public community colleges in the USA.
In addition, 4 year universities typically have less selective (or open) extension divisions.
Actually, neither. But UDC is a terrible university. Look at research output, graduation rate, retention, class size, funding, academic opportunities… And relatively unsafe to boot.
You only go if it’s the only choice you have - in DC there are better commutable choices, some of which offer merit and others meet full need.
NW corner of CT here. We have a community college within 5 minutes of our home. The nearest four year public is about 50 minutes away driving. I guess that is within commutable range…but I did it for post masters work…and it was really not fun. And I was only doing it once a week.
While my town is not a large population, there are a bunch of towns surrounding mine that are larger…and really…no four year colleges closer.
While it is true that many desire to go away for college, this thread is mainly about B/B+ (i.e. reasonably college-ready but not able to gain admission to the best FA colleges or earn big merit scholarships) students constrained by financial realities (not being able to afford room and board away from home).
In California, there are two ways for areas to be underserved by public four-year universities.
Firstly and most obviously: there are some relatively isolated parts of the state that have never had a public four-year university. Example: the Redding-Red Bluff Metropolitan Statistical Area (i.e. Shasta County), population 180,000. It’s about 75 miles from Redding to Chico State, the nearest CSU. In this case, Chico State gets credit for establish a degree completion program in Redding at Shasta College, the local CC (although it seems to me that it would be simpler to just allow Shasta to grant bachelor’s degrees).
Secondly and less obviously: there are parts of the state that were formerly served by accessible public four-year universities, but where access has been lost due to what might be termed “academic gentrification”. You know how downscale urban neighborhoods get “discovered” by hipsters and become fashionable, resulting in higher rents that push out the locals? An analogous development is occurring at some of California’s traditionally less selective state universities, like Cal Poly SLO, San Diego State or Long Beach State. They now attract tons of applications, and admissions standards have risen dramatically. Local B students that would like to get a low-cost education by commuting to their local state university are now getting turned away; they effectively have poorer college options than their parents did a generation ago. See, for example: https://edsource.org/2016/rising-number-of-rejections-raise-fears-that-long-beach-is-becoming-elite-university/95431
CSULB is not the best example, due to the strong local area preference it uses (as the article describes and links to), and the existence of two other less selective CSUs nearby. I.e. B/B+ students in the area are still likely to be able to commute to CSULB. It is getting much more selective for non local students, though. CPSLO is probably a better example, as is SDSU.
But some majors, like nursing everywhere, and CS at SJSU, may be difficult to get into, local or non local.
In terms of other areas that are far from any public universities, Fairfield (noted previously) and Visalia would be other examples.
It’s true that CSULB does have a strong local preference, so a local B student still has a shot there. On other hand, the admissions standards have risen even for locals, so there has still been a loss of accessibility. As noted in the article:
And it’s also true that local students still have options at nearby CSUDH and CSULA. On the other hand, it’s become much harder for students in the CSUDH and CSULA service areas to attend CSULB. A school like South High in Torrance, for example, is only 16 miles from CSULB, but that’s technically not “local” because it is outside the service area. So again, there has been a loss of accessibility:
I thought CA, at least, has a good CC->4 year pathway system, no?
And fin aid for those who are poor in CA is better than in other states. So getting a 4 year degree still should be attainable for a B-student who can afford some college costs.
It does, but the pathway can break down if you graduate from your local CC and can’t get into your local four-year university, because it’s become too selective.
In California, the cost of housing is often greater than the cost of state school tuition, so students routinely try to keep college expenses down by living at home and commuting to school. But for this strategy to work, (1) there has to be a public university within commuting distance, and (2) you have to be able to get into that local university.
California has done a reasonable job with (1); obviously you can’t put four-year universities in every possible location, but the coverage is pretty good. However, certain parts of the state are starting to see problems with (2). Certain regional state schools that were never intended to be elite or selective institutions are getting huge numbers of applications, and are therefore becoming increasingly difficult to get into.
If you do reasonably well at your local CC, you will get a place in the CSU or UC systems. However, California is a large state, and that place could be at a campus hundreds of miles away, rather than at your local four-year university. This radically alters the financial equation.
@Corbett:
“It does, but the pathway can break down if you graduate from your local CC and can’t get into your local four-year university, because it’s become too selective.”
Don’t all the UC’s besides the top 3 have TAGs? And yes, they may not be local, though doesn’t CA have various fin aid programs for the poor and middle class? At what income do you stop qualifying for them?
The schools being discussed in this thread (e.g. Cal Poly, San Diego State, Long Beach State) represent the California State University (CSU) system – not the University of California (UC) system. The majority of CCC transfer students move to the CSU system, which has larger enrollment, more campuses, lower tuition, and easier admissions standards than the UC system. Historically, pretty much any CCC grad could transfer into pretty much any CSU campus. That can no longer be taken for granted, as certain CSUs have become more selective.
The CSU system has the equivalent of TAG, called the Associate Degree for Transfer (ADT) program. However, the ADT program only guarantees admission into the CSU system as a whole, not to a specific campus. So you could be admitted to a campus hundreds of miles away – in fact, the more remote campuses are the most likely to have space.
The CSU system has traditionally stayed affordable through the simple approach of charging very low tuition – not by doling out large financial aid grants. So if you live at home rent-free and pay that low CSU tuition, you can get a very affordable education. But if you can’t get into your local CSU, and you have to pay for room and board elsewhere (which will likely exceed the tuition), then that strategy no longer works. Obviously the affordability will go down, and it’s unlikely that your CSU campus or the state will offer you a grant to make up the difference.
The UCs do upgrade FA for students living at the school. The CSUs do not, with the local area admission preference instead. But that does not work that well for CPSLO, SDSU, or heavily impacted majors.
For low income CA residents, net price after FA is usually CSU commuter < UC < CSU resident.
I live in the 3rd most populous county in Texas and there are 2 public schools just over an hour away with no traffic (which is really just in the middle of the night). With traffic both would be over an hour and a half. There are a couple of community colleges and a private school closer.