An editorial in Sunday's Washington Post reports that there is increasing pressure to create a community college in D.C. Apparently, UDC currently offers some two-year degrees, so one option would be to expand its mission more fully in this direction by having it create a sort of community college "branch." Other proposed options (for some reason, the city felt it needed to get the Brookings Institution to give it advice on this matter) included just creating an independent community college and creating some sort of joint venture where multiple institutions would offer courses toward two-year degrees. You can read the whole article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/04/AR2008070402129.html?nav=rss_print/outlook
Of course, I'm sure that whatever road the city takes, it will be a long time coming, so nothing much will change in the short run. And having access to a community college will be wonderful for DC residents, who for whatever reasons (probably significantly because we have not been very metro accessible, but I doubt that's the only reason) have not chosen to come to take classes at NOVA in large numbers. But it seems to me it will also really change the landscape we are working with. Will this push NOVA to focus more and more on its western locations? Might students in Alexandria, Arlington, etc. who work (or like to hang out) downtown choose to attend classes at DC's community college rather that at NOVA (assuming they could get favorable tuition rates, which might well be in the city's interest to offer)?
How do you think a DC community college would affect NOVA?
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