For the past several years, Dr. Robert Breuder, president of the College of DuPage has been leading the charge in Illinois for community colleges to offer four-year bachelor’s degrees in certain fields. Currently, around 10 community colleges in the state, including Parkland College, are considering such an expansion.

Proponents of this higher education reform say community colleges should be able to offer bachelor’s degrees in certain fields, also noting the affordability of community colleges. Opponents point to concerns of weakening existing four-year institutions and a lack of definitive evidence that there is a significant, unmet need for more institutions to offer bachelor’s degrees.

We quibble with the speculative nature of the community college proposal. A major rationale behind the push for giving community colleges this niche is an increased demand for four-year programs. 

But, if that isn’t the case, giving community colleges this ability will likely serve to needlessly further saturate the market. If there is a major unmet need specifically for bachelor’s degrees that community colleges would theoretically be able to offer, we’d like to see some numbers.

In our opinion, these proposals are more of a Band-Aid approach rather than a curative approach to the larger issue of college affordability. As students, we certainly understand, and find persuasive arguments promising to lower the cost of education. However, we also believe that more needs to be done to actually resolve the high cost of higher education, rather than giving community colleges the OK to start churning out bachelor’s degrees for select majors.

Ten years ago, the base rate tuition for resident undergraduate students on this campus was $6,460, or $19,380 for non-residents. Today, residents pay $12,036, an 86 percent increase, and non-residents $26,662, a 38 percent increase. Many students meet these, and the other costs associated with attendance, by taking out loans. 

According to the Project on Student Debt, 52 percent of University of Illinois students graduated with debt in 2012, and the average debt was $24,657. The picture isn’t much rosier for the rest of the state’s public or private four-year schools. 

These numbers indicate a clear concern about college affordability, which we think seems to be the underlying issue in the case of creating four-year community colleges that offer bachelor’s degrees. And, as mentioned before, this only puts a Band-Aid on a problem of affordabililty that needs something more akin to open-heart surgery. 

We do think community colleges can and will play an important role in ensuring Illinois higher education remains affordable. However, allowing Parkland, or any other community college in the state to start granting bachelor’s degrees isn’t going to do much to make skyrocketing college costs go down, which, we believe, is where the focus should be.