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Students have started to wait for more than a year to gain admission to the community colleges today. In today’s difficult economy, a lot of students aspire to gain certain skills through courses offered in community colleges. Referred to as open access institutions with pride, community colleges may actually start turning away students in the near future. This situation is a result of lack of funding and lack of space.
 
According to the administrators of these colleges, it is becoming increasingly difficult sticking on to their core mission of not turning away students. Almost all community colleges today have huge waiting lists, especially in health related programs such as nursing. In fact, certain schools require students to wait even for two years for these classes.

States like Arizona have been severely hampered by the budget cuts and the community colleges here are floundering as they feel the pinch severely. For example, the state budget cut for Pima community college was 26% while the rise in enrolments was 7%. If this situation continues for another year or so, colleges may soon have to turn away students.

The condition is similar in all community colleges across the country. Many students are forced to change career options or seek other colleges to earn their degrees. According to Dr. Norma Goonen, the student affairs and academic provost at a Hispanic Miami Dade College, they do not keep waiting lists, especially for the health science programs such as respiratory science and nursing. This institution grants both two year and four year degree programs. If an applicant does not get in, then he may have to reapply the following year for the course all over again.

Apparently, Miami Dade College too struggles under budget cuts and increase in enrolments. They are also forced to increase the number of students in each program to accommodate more number of students. There is a very high competition for getting into programs such as nursing that take limited number of students.

According to McCabe, the former president of Miami Dade College who was instrumental in increasing the number of students to 70,000 from 1,500, it is possible to manage the situation by appointing part time faculty and adding extra class sections. However, there is a problem with this in the health care programs which cannot strictly take students above the accreditation board cap. Even in other programs, it is not possible for administrators to randomly take a decision on increasing the number of classes.

It seems like community colleges will soon no longer be open access institutions. With situation in many states becoming tighter, there seems to be little hope in maintaining their core mission of community service by not rejecting access to any student. In the state of Michigan which is reeling under the severe blow to the automobile industry, the community colleges see a phenomenal rise in enrolments even while operating at budget levels set in the year 1998. It remains to be seen if there is any hope of improvement in the situation in the near future.