WASHINGTON — As community colleges take center stage today at a White House summit, a group representing for-profit colleges is taking aim at community colleges. In a report released Monday, a marketing firm working for the Coalition for Educational Success, an advocacy group for several privately held for-profit companies, argues that community colleges engage in “unsavory recruitment practices” and offer students “poorer-than-expected academic quality, course availability, class scheduling, job placement and personal attention.” The report crystallizes arguments from the for-profit sector that community colleges — perceived as the Obama administration’s preferred set of institutions to offer work force training — are ill-equipped to serve the students they already enroll and would struggle in taking on larger enrollments. The document’s release just ahead of today’s summit is intended to tarnish the event’s luster and the praise for community colleges that will come from President Obama and others, and it emerges amid the for-profit sector’s aggressive lobbying, advertising and rallying against the U.S. Department of Education ‘s proposed regulations on “gainful employment” and a Senate panel’s investigation of the sector. ON THE WEB: Is job training a zero-sum game? MORE FROM INSIDE HIGHER ED: Taking the long view “Community colleges play a vital role in the American economy,” said Jean Norris, managing partner of Norton Norris, the firm that produced the report. “However, they are not the only choice. Community colleges have some systemic issues that really need to be addressed and the singular focus on the problems of the career colleges is a waste of time and money and forgets the institutions that serve a much larger number of students.” For one part of the report, Norton Norris sent “secret shoppers” to meet with admissions officers at 15 community colleges and found that none would provide graduation rates, even when asked. In the report, these findings are likened to those identified by the Government Accountability Office on undercover visits to for-profit colleges, where investigators were told they didn’t have to repay loans and encouraged to lie on financial aid forms. The firm also surveyed current for-profit college students who had been enrolled at community colleges, asking them to compare their satisfaction levels at the two different kinds of institution. In all but one category — price — the for-profit colleges came out on top. David S. Baime, senior vice president of government relations and research at the American Association of Community College, characterized the report as “garbage” and said it was yet another attempt by the for-profit sector to fight scrutiny from the Obama administration and those on Capitol Hill. “It probably makes sense as a sort of PR strategy to try to run us down and sort of boost themselves,” he said. Norris insisted that it was not her aim to attack community colleges, but rather to “highlight issues beyond the career college sector that are the same ones the career college sector is being attacked for.” At last week’s Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing questioning for-profit colleges’ student outcomes and student debt, Senator Michael B. Enzi (R-Wyo.) accused the committee’s chair, Senator Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), of examining the sector without looking at how it fits into the broader landscape of U.S. colleges and universities. “I agree there is clearly a problem in higher education — now you’ll notice I didn’t limit that comment to for-profit schools,” Enzi said. “It’s na?ve to think these problems are limited to just the for-profit sector. We’ve been looking at this in a vacuum.” While researchers said that some of the report’s findings could be accurate, the study itself is of questionable value. “We can’t call this research,” said Sara Goldrick-Rab, an assistant professor of educational policy studies at the University of Wisconsin at Madison . “The for-profits are under attack and this report is being paid for by for-profits. We need to be asking many of these questions, but a report like this one isn’t providing meaningful answers.” In the report’s introduction, Norton Norris concedes a string of flaws with the report. The sample surveyed for the study “was one of convenience and may not represent all student experiences,” the report said. The students given a chance to respond to the survey were ones who withdrew or graduated from a nonprofit college before enrolling at a for-profit, admittedly meaning that “bias may be present” among respondents. The response rate was 10%. And the survey was “custom-designed and thereby not previously proven valid and reliable.” Thomas R. Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University ‘s Teachers College, said he saw the report as “a tactic” for for-profit institutions in their battle against greater regulation. “Certainly from [for-profit colleges'] perspective it would be reasonable to try to put out an argument that says there are many problems with community colleges.” Nonetheless, Bailey said, some of its findings are true. “Community colleges have low resources, the counselor-to-student ratio is extremely low. It’s not surprising that students are not very well-informed about their options at community colleges. But, again, I don’t think we can look at this as a reliable document.”

U.S. colleges aren’t doing enough to limit student access to alcohol, a new study contends. College administrators do recognize that student drinking is a major problem, but they focus on individual interventions and campus-based alcohol restrictions. They need to do more work with communities to develop policies to reduce excess drinking by students, such as monitoring of illegal sales of alcohol and limiting the number of retail alcohol outlets, according to study author Toben Nelson. SORORITIES: Antics at Miami U. spur alcohol debate REPORT: Alcohol companies go online to lure younger drinkers SOCIAL DRINKING: Alcohol habits of friends impact your own Nelson, an assistant professor in the epidemiology and community health division at the University of Minnesota , and colleagues analyzed the answers given by 351 college administrators who responded to an online survey in 2008. The respondents were asked if they were following recommendations from the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism’s college drinking task force 2002 report on the best strategies for reducing student drinking. The 2008 survey showed there was “very little action on the task force recommendations and very little implementation,” Nelson said in a news release from the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research . “Very few had even had conversations in the communities.” Many of the college administrators knew about the task force recommendations, but more than 22% did not know about them, according to the survey. Previous studies had shown that community-based alcohol control is effective in reducing college student drinking through policies such as monitoring of illegal sales of alcohol, limiting the number of alcohol outlets, increasing prices, and mandatory training for servers. But Nelson and colleagues found that only one-third of college communities performed compliance checks for illegal alcohol sales, only 15% mandated server training, only 7% restricted the number of alcohol outlets, and only 2% raised alcohol prices. Among the study’s other findings: • Education about the consequences of excessive drinking was given to students at 98% of the colleges. The methods included lectures, meetings or workshops, poster campaigns and computer-based programs. • Two-thirds of colleges provided interventions for problem drinkers or those at high risk, either on campus or by paying for off-campus services. The study findings were released online in advance of publication in the October print issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research .

DAVIE, Fla. (AP) — Professor Derron Bowen teaches high school math to college students, patiently chalking equations on the board on basic arithmetic topics such as the speed of a driver on a 20-hour trip. Bowen’s class at Broward College in South Florida is for students who didn’t score high enough on an entrance test to get into college-level math. In all, about two-thirds of students entering the community college need to take at least one remedial course in math, English or reading. Nationwide, about a third of first-year students in 2007-08 had taken at least one remedial course, according to the U.S. Department of Education . At public two-year colleges, that number rises to about 42%. Education observers worry that the vast numbers of students coming to college unprepared will pose a major roadblock to President Barack Obama ‘s goal for the United States to once again lead the world in college degrees. COMMUNITY COLLEGES: 6 states aim to reform remedial programs “We don’t get there from here,” said Bob Wise , president of the Alliance for Excellent Education and former governor of West Virginia . In October, the Education Department reported that many states declare students to have grade-level mastery of reading and math when they do not. In a 2007 ACT National Curriculum Survey of college professors, 65% said their states poorly prepare students for college-level coursework. The survey found that professors want students with stronger skills in specific areas, while high schools typically impart a less comprehensive understanding of a broad range of topics. In his remedial math class in Florida, Bowen sees students who haven’t been in school for a decade or more, but some haven’t even had time to hang up their high school diplomas. “How were they allowed to go through?” Bowen said. “I’m thinking, ‘If I could have been teaching you back when you were 6, 7, you would be a powerhouse today.’” The Obama administration is pushing states to adopt tougher standards, and governors and education leaders across the country are working together to propose a uniform set of common standards. A first draft was released in March, and a final proposal could come this summer. For others, the problem points to the need to develop alternative forms of job training for people who aren’t academically inclined and are unlikely to finish college. “We’re telling kids you’ll be a third-class citizen if you don’t go to college,” said Marty Nemko, an education policy consultant and author. “And colleges are taking kids who in previous generations would not have gone to college.” Nemko favors an apprenticeship program similar to those offered in Finland , Japan and Germany. That’s a point that Daniel Paz, a student in Bowen’s class, says he can relate to. “College is not for me,” said Paz, who graduated from high school last year and is considering a career in criminal justice. “It’s something I have to do, but if there was another way, than I’d be doing something else.” Some students in remedial courses are older workers trying to jump-start a new career. But a sizable amount are recent graduates who performed well in high school: A 2008 study by the nonprofit Strong American Schools found that nearly four out of five remedial students had a high school GPA of 3.0 or higher. The price of providing remedial training is costly. The Alliance for Excellent Education estimates the nation loses $3.7 billion a year because students are not learning basic needed skills, including $1.4 billion to provide remedial education for students who have recently completed high school. “From taxpayers’ standpoint, remediation is paying for the same education twice,” Wise said. Students who need remedial classes are also more likely to drop out: Those taking any remedial reading, for example, had a 17% chance of completing a bachelor’s degree, according to 2004 Education Department data. At the recent annual American Association of Community Colleges conference, Melinda Gates, co-founder of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, called improving or reducing remediation the best way to improve completion rates at community colleges, which hover at around 25%. “Right away, your dreams of going to college are deferred, because technically you’re not in college,” she said. “If you start in a remedial class, the odds are that you will never finish a credit-bearing course in that subject.” She pointed to positive models: El Paso Community College, which gives prospective students placement tests while still in high school, and Mountain Empire Community College in Virginia, where there are new lesson plans and textbooks to move students through remedial education faster. The Gates Foundation is spending $100 million to develop new models for remedial education. Advocates say the need for reform is urgent, pointing to studies that show more jobs in the future will require more education, and that people with less education have been hit with higher levels of unemployment during the recession. Nemko doubts the notion that most workers will need a higher level degree. “In every corporation or government agency, there needs to be a small number of people coming out with the great new ideas,” he said. “But for everyone one of those, they need 20 to 50 worker bees who are there to provide the product.” At Broward College, there are signs of improvement: The percentage needing remedial education has dropped, from 85% of first-time college students to 74% in the 2009 incoming class. “I don’t remember learning any of this stuff in high school,” said CaSonya Fulmore, 40, who was laid off from her job as a customer service supervisor with American Express Co. last year. Fulmore is taking a preparatory math class and studying for a degree in social science, with hopes of becoming a counselor. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.