Regular readers know I often push back against media portrayals that focus on a handful of elite institutions as if their practices represent the entire country. That's why The Hechinger Report's coverage this week on rising acceptance rates at most institutions was a welcome shift. The reality of expanding access deserves attention. Also, in this week’s issue we discuss the growing number of community colleges authorized to offer four-year degrees and the tension that's creating across the sector. 

After reading today’s issue, share your thoughts on the shifting admissions landscape in the comments! 

Shifting Admission Narratives 

From Getting in to college is getting easier | The Hechinger Report 

Jon Marcus reports on the increasing admissions rates for a growing share of institutions. 

Our Thoughts  

This article deserves wider coverage because it names something the mainstream conversation about college keeps missing: the actual experience most students have when applying to college bears almost no resemblance to the stress-soaked Ivy admissions drama that dominates the news cycle. Outside the most selective tier, acceptance rates are climbing. Seven in ten applicants to private colleges get in. Nearly eight in ten at public universities. The median acceptance rate jumped 7.6 percentage points between 2012 and 2022. And yet, 45 percent of young people think getting into college is harder now than it was for their parents' generation when the opposite is true. 

This perception gap is real, and it is harmful. It drives unnecessary anxiety, discourages students who would succeed in college from applying, and warps the decisions students make. When families believe that college admission is a scarce commodity, they treat it like one. They overapply. They chase prestige signals instead of fit. They burn out before they even get to campus. There are hundreds of good schools beyond the Ivies and flagship public universities. Quality education is not concentrated in 30 schools. It is distributed across hundreds of institutions that would love to enroll more students and have the capacity to serve them well. 

Regional public universities, liberal arts colleges, and teaching-focused institutions educate the vast majority of college students in this country. Most have excellent faculty, strong retention programs, and tight connections to local employers. The problem is not a lack of good options. It's that students do not know those options exist, or they have been led to believe they do not count. 

The question is whether the broader public narrative catches up to this reality. As long as media coverage fixates on single-digit acceptance rates at a handful of elite institutions, families will continue to perceive college access as scarce when it is actually expanding for most students. Changing that story requires institutions to be transparent about their real admissions data and honest about the value they offer beyond brand recognition. If you are not one of those dozen ultra-selective schools, stop trying to act like one. Lean into what makes your institution distinctive, invest in the students you serve, and tell a better story about the value you provide. The narrative that college is impossible to get into has never been true for most students. The gap between that story and reality is doing real damage. Closing it requires institutions to compete on what they actually deliver for students, not on how many applicants they can reject. 

Community College Bachelor’s Degrees 

From The Fight Over Community College Bachelor’s Degrees | Inside Higher Ed 

Sara Weissman looks at the expansion of bachelor's degree programs at community colleges and the tension this has created in the higher ed sector. 

Our Thoughts  

This article captures the inherent tension in our sector as we approach the demographic cliff and grapple with declining enrollment. When enrollment is shrinking and fewer high school graduates are choosing to go directly to college, the response is competition for a shrinking pool of students. It’s only natural that turf wars follow. 

What makes this debate particularly challenging is that I support expanding educational opportunities. If traditional four-year institutions cannot or will not meet students where they are geographically, financially, or programmatically, then why shouldn’t we celebrate community colleges filling that gap? The article makes a compelling case: Maricopa Community Colleges charges $14,550 for a bachelor's degree while Arizona State University charges up to $47,000. Feather River College serves students in a region where the nearest four-year institution is more than 80 miles away. These are not frivolous programs. They address real access barriers for place-bound students, first-generation students, and students for whom cost is the deciding factor. 

And yet, I also understand the concern from four-year institutions, especially smaller privates and regional publics that are already operating on thin margins. When your enrollment model depends on capturing transfer students from community colleges or serving rural regions, and community colleges start offering the same credential at a third of the price, that is not an abstract market threat. For some institutions, this could be existential. 

Here is where the argument gets interesting, at least for me. Is this really that different from four-year institutions offering workforce development programs, continuing education, and short-term credentials that compete directly with community colleges? Four-year institutions have been blurring the lines between traditional degrees and applied credentials for years, often in pursuit of the same revenue and enrollment goals that are now driving community college baccalaureate expansion. The new Workforce Pell legislation will only accelerate this, allowing four-year institutions to compete for federal aid dollars in the short-term credential space that community colleges have traditionally dominated. 

So, when four-year colleges and universities argue that community colleges are "stepping out of bounds," the natural questions are: Whose bounds and who gets to draw them? 

Perhaps one of the deeper challenges this debate exposes is what we think a traditional four-year degree is really all about. If a bachelor's degree is primarily about workforce preparation in applied fields like respiratory therapy, nursing, or data analytics, then why should only four-year institutions be authorized to grant them? Community colleges have been delivering workforce-aligned education for decades and often do it more efficiently than their four-year counterparts. On the other hand, if a bachelor's degree is supposed to include a broader liberal arts foundation, critical thinking across disciplines, and exposure to ideas beyond immediate career preparation, then maybe the concern is not about competition but about mission drift. Are we creating two tiers of bachelor's degrees, one "applied" and one "traditional," with different expectations, different costs, and different long-term outcomes? 

In the end, shouldn't we be happy as a sector that more people are able to pursue post-secondary education? The goal has always been to increase attainment, reduce barriers, and serve students who have been historically underserved by higher education. If community college bachelor’s programs help us do that, especially in rural areas and for low-income students, then the question is not whether they should exist but how we make sure they work well. That means real collaboration on transfer pathways, honest conversations about program duplication, and transparent data on outcomes. States like Illinois that are building in guardrails and creating space for universities and community colleges to negotiate program offerings together are modeling what this could look like when institutions prioritize students over territory. 

The alternative is a prolonged fight over who gets to offer what, while enrollment continues to slide, and students go elsewhere or do not go at all. That helps no one.