Pritzker to call for expansion of 4-year degree offerings at some community colleges

SPRINGFIELD – Gov. JB Pritzker plans to offer a proposal in his budget address Wednesday that would allow some community colleges to offer four-year baccalaureate degrees.

The goal, according to the governor’s office, would be to make four-year degrees more accessible to working adults, particularly those who don’t live near a public university.

That would be a big change for Illinois community colleges, which typically offer two-year associate’s degrees and other kinds of training certificates. But Martin Torres, Pritzker’s first assistant deputy governor for education, said it’s a concept already in use in many other states.

“There are 24 states across the country that have this type of policy in place, including Indiana, Missouri and Michigan just in the Midwest,” he said in an interview with Capitol News Illinois. “There are almost 200 community colleges across the country who are doing this today. And so the concept is certainly not new. It’s something that’s been advocated for here by our own community colleges. And we really felt like it was time to do everything we can to reduce barriers across the state in earning a B.A. in high-need areas.”

Torres said the governor’s office will push for legislation this year to authorize community colleges to offer four-year programs specifically tailored to meet the employment needs of their communities in high-demand employment areas. Examples of those might include health care, early childhood education or advanced manufacturing, he said.

The legislation would allow community colleges to offer programs in subject areas where they have identified unmet workforce needs in their region. The proposed programs would also need to be approved by both the Illinois Board of Higher Education and the Illinois Community College Board.

Schools would also have to demonstrate how their proposed programs would reach students who are underserved by other higher education programs in the state.

The governor’s proposal would also cap the tuition rates community colleges could charge for a baccalaureate program. Schools would not be allowed to charge more than 150% of their regular tuition for the third and fourth years of a four-year program.

By comparison, according to the governor’s office, Illinois public universities currently charge tuition and fees that are nearly three times higher than those of community colleges while private, not-for-profit universities charge rates that are more than six times higher.

There are currently 15 public universities in Illinois, including three medical schools. Only two of those – the Southern Illinois University campuses in Carbondale and Edwardsville – are located south of Interstate 70.

Community colleges, by contrast, are spread throughout the state more evenly. Illinois is divided into 39 community college districts, each governed by a board of trustees that has its own taxing authority.

Torres said one of the main goals of the governor’s proposal is to make four-year degrees more accessible to a segment of the population that doesn’t fit the standard profile of an undergraduate college student.

“What we’ve observed of the student profile across the country where this is done is that those students tend to be older, they tend to be more diverse, and they tend to have personal logistics and circumstances that just don’t allow for them to up and move to wherever a four-year public university may be,” he said.

It was not immediately known prior to the governor’s address, however, whether state universities will support the idea of allowing community colleges to offer degree programs that might duplicate, or even compete with, established programs at the universities.

“I don’t want to speak on behalf of the public universities on the subject,” Torres said. “What I would say is, when we look at the experience of other states throughout the country – Florida was a real early adopter of the community college baccalaureate – there’s no evidence in the enrollment patterns there or anywhere else across the country that would suggest that this is going to have a negative impact on public university enrollment.”

Torres said the legislation being proposed does not include funding for the additional cost of launching new degree programs. He said the bill proposes to give community colleges permission to offer four-year degrees, but it would be up to those schools to decide for themselves how to pay for any additional costs associated with the programs.

He also said the governor’s proposal to expand community college degree offerings is unrelated to any other higher education plan being considered in the General Assembly this year, including proposals in the House and Senate to overhaul the state’s funding system for public universities. Those plans would replace the current system with one similar to the Evidence-Based Funding model used for PreK-12 education.

Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service that distributes state government coverage to hundreds of news outlets statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation.