Join us to hear about how community colleges are working to save democracy! Julie White is the district chancellor and CEO of Pierce College Fort Steilacoom, a community college in Washington State. She’s been working at community colleges and celebrating them for over 25 years, and as a testament to her success, this year she was the winner of Campus Compact’s Eduardo J. Padrón Award for Presidential Leadership.
Democracy’s Colleges
by Julie White
bell hooks wrote: “To be truly visionary, we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.” That tension is the animating spirit of the work I describe here — the willingness to look honestly at current conditions, to seek solutions for the problems we face, and still to dare to imagine something better.
Much has been written about the loss of public trust in higher education. But consistently, community colleges—which educate over 40% of U.S. undergraduates—are the most trusted sector of higher education. And while we are the least-discussed sector, we are one of the most consistent and important places where the work of renovation happens.
Civic engagement is in our DNA
Civic engagement is central to the history and work of community colleges. The landmark Truman Commission Report of 1947 called for expanding access to the first two years of college for everyone who could benefit, envisioning broad access to higher education as essential to strengthening American democracy. That vision helped earn us the title “Democracy’s Colleges” — reflecting the mission of expanding opportunity, educating for a democratic citizenry, and serving the needs of our local communities. To the Commission, education for democracy should aim to:
ensure equal liberty, equal justice, and equal opportunity to all;
enable citizens to influence the forces that strengthen or weaken liberty;
work across public and private sectors to solve current social problems, and
aim for international understanding and cooperation.
The Truman Commission’s call to expand community colleges, adult education, and financial aid created continued expansion and transformed college access.
We were developed to democratize higher education, with a focus on local-ness — often starting up in small spaces in community centers and retail stores, and keeping those connections even as our physical campuses grew. And while we are discussed in the media far less than our four-year counterparts, we have long enjoyed a close relationship with the communities we serve. Community colleges remain uniquely positioned to build trust because of our local roots, affordability, and direct engagement with the communities we serve. We are key community anchors in our regions.
Renovation is the work we do every day.
The transformative effect of higher education is personal to me. In my community of origin—the rural Midwest—my family included those who could not read or write, those who never finished high school, those who didn’t trust the people they called “longhairs” (their word for the liberal elite). Yet they built thriving businesses and full lives, amidst generations of limited opportunity.
From those beginnings, I dared to do something far beyond my imagination: pursue a college education. I was able to do so thanks to Rolla M. Malpas—an insurance executive who never finished high school, yet founded a scholarship at DePauw University for low-income students with academic promise. Now I have the great privilege of doing my part to make that possible for more students.
The work of community colleges
Often, when we think of civic engagement in higher education, we think about voting participation efforts. Voting is one important outcome and expression of civic engagement, and in fact, the Higher Education Act requires most colleges and universities to provide voter registration information and forms to students.
But it is not the entirety of civic engagement. Civic engagement develops the knowledge, relationships, skills, and sense of agency that make democratic participation more likely and more effective.
At Pierce College, we’ve built that vision into something concrete: a college where all can Belong, Advance, and Thrive. Because when students know they belong, they advance. When they advance, whole communities thrive. We focus on changing the system rather than blaming the student, thereby unlocking the talent that has always been present in our communities.
We’re proud of the results. Pierce’s Latine/Hispanic and Black students are succeeding at rates 30–50% higher than the state average, and we have eliminated many equity gaps. We are not just closing gaps. We are proving what’s possible when equity isn’t an afterthought — it’s the strategy. If we are to live up to the evolving ideals of democracy, including the “equal liberty, equal justice, and equal opportunity” the Truman Commission called for, then equity is simply democracy’s unfinished business. A democracy that leaves some communities behind isn’t fully democratic. It’s that simple.
Two specific examples illustrate this work at Pierce College..
First, we focus resources on the communities furthest from access. Reviewing our community data, we identified specific zip codes in our service district that we have not served as well as others. These neighborhoods have disproportionately higher numbers of poverty-impacted and ALICE households. (ALICE is a United Way metric that stands for Asset-Limited, Income Constrained, Employed: people who are working, but one emergency away from losing housing, child care, medical care, or other basic needs.) Those same zip codes are disproportionately home to populations less likely to access our college, including Latine/Hispanic, Black/African American, and parenting students. So we’ve built specific outreach, retention, and community engagement strategies to connect with folks right where they are. We want to let them know that we welcome them at Pierce College, and we want their voices in our community.
Second, we build reciprocal partnerships that bring the community to the college and the college to the community. As the Latine/Hispanic population in our county grew, so did the number of these students at the college, so we began building infrastructure to match: campus tours and publications in Spanish, a multilingual stipend for staff so students can learn about college in the language they’re most comfortable in, and professional development to strengthen the culturally responsive skills and knowledge of our faculty and staff. We also built a relationship with the local nonprofit organization serving the Latino and Indigenous Native community. We started slowly, building programming together, with a shared vision of eventually locating a new office for them at our college. They are moving in this month. It’s the first of many partnerships to come as we build out a full Center for Vibrant Inclusive Communities. We envision our campus as a place where students, faculty, staff, and neighbors build civic ties and practice the skills of pluralistic democracy.
While I love celebrating the work happening at Pierce College, it’s important to note that this is the kind of work happening at community colleges across the country – and, in fact, at many regional public colleges and universities. Together, these institutions educate nearly 2/3 of undergraduates in the United States. We must amplify this work and collaborate across sectors, including with private colleges and institutions, to support and expand this work, deeply rooted in community.
The work continues
Community colleges are democracy’s colleges. We were built to bring education to all. With that promise still unfinished, we cannot afford to slow down.
So I take that as a charge: to keep using my voice and my position to defend education as a public good, a democratic right, and our most powerful tool for building a more just society. That’s the work that will help us reach those “imagined possibilities” beyond our current concrete reality.
