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Private colleges argue potential harms of 4-year community college degrees
(iowacapitaldispatch.com)
this post was submitted on 21 Jan 2026
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They already compete against public universities, why would this be any different? They just don't want to compete at all, because that means the obscenely bloated admin paychecks may have to decrease
Professor/chair/whatever here. We don't really compete at all. It's actually the opposite. I work really well with the CC dean's in my area.
2 year degrees serve many important purposes. Some of them are down after their degree. Others transfer to us.
The former aren't a category that are interested in another 2 years anyway. No big deal.
The transfers? They are awesome from an administrative perspective. They produce degrees faster, which is important if we want our universities funded. They actually cost less to educate.
The big problem is that more CC's offering 4 years (outside of some special cases) is that it would turn things from a productive relationship to actual competition. That is disasterous for both parties as we need both to exist and work together in a productive fashion.
There are tons of smaller issues, but the whole system will become even more difficult to work if the standard divisions disappear.
It's kind of scary that a college professor could misread what I said so badly.
I said private colleges were already competing against Public Universities/State Colleges, not CCs.
And frankly, no one actually needs private colleges to exist. We need affordable educational opportunities, and private colleges have decided to abandon that in favor of greed. And fucking franchise sports.
You wrote they in a situation that has multiple entities attached to the story. Your statement was ambiguous.
The context clues within that sentence removes any ambiguity. No one with a passable grade school level of reading comprehension was going to think I meant CCs were competing with Public Universities, especially given the title I was responding to had Private Colleges as the primary actor.
I mean says you, and that's fine. But of course you would think so.
Private colleges have their own niche. They're important too. And they're absolutely not cannibalizing the public institutions. They're far more expensive, offer more specialized experiences, and generally speaking support at different clientele.
Edit: If you don't like the idea of private 4 years, wait until you hear about private universities. XD
Who said anything about cannibalizing?!
Damn, you really can't read.
What do you think competition for limited resources means in this context?
There are only three public universities that offer bachelor's degrees in Iowa. Community colleges would absolutely increase the competition as community colleges could offer degrees closer to where people live.
Which is bad for those wanting to gouge their customers, yeah.