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Americans depend largely on their community colleges to advance a form of democratic meritocracy in which all people--from dual-enrolled high-school and home-schooled students to traditional 18-year-old students to forty-something career changers, to retirees and octogenarians--have the opportunity to learn, grow, and excel. Yet despite the vital role that community colleges play in advancing Americans' upward mobility, the question remains: Will policy makers adequately support community colleges as facilitators of entrepreneurship and purveyors of the American dream? The author spent a decade trying to raise awareness in Washington about the power and promise of American community colleges--with far less success than she had hoped for--and it is clear to her that the federal government has failed these workhorses of American higher education. It has also flubbed the collection of data that would represent just how valuable the institutions really are. To better support today's college students and the institutions that educate them, people must acknowledge the significant and growing proportion of nontraditional students, and understand that policies and programs developed decades ago have not kept pace with the changes in their higher-education system.

For the past several years, policy makers of both political parties have taken to the stump to talk about the inadequacies of the U.S. higher education system, despite the fact [...]