The Minority Report: How Minority Students are Really Faring at Community Colleges

College textbooks are notoriously expensive. Community college students, especially those who are just beginning college or returning to school after years in the workplace, may experience sticker shock upon their first visit to the college bookstore.

A Business Week article on textbook prices reports that the General Accounting Office (GAO) says that textbook prices have increased at twice the rate of inflation since 1986! College students are estimated to spend an average of between $700 and $1,100 per year on textbooks, according to a Washington Post article on the issue. The issue of textbook affordability exists for community college students as much as it does for students at four-year institutions. Most community college classes require textbooks that are similar in price to those required at the most expensive four-year colleges and universities. Thankfully, today’s community college students have a number of resources at their disposal for cutting down on the cost of textbooks. Before you pay full price for textbooks at your campus bookstore, try some of these ideas.

This video offers advice on where to buy or rent textbooks cheaply.

Smartly Prepare for Your Textbook Bargain-Hunting

Before you begin your search for cheap textbooks, you’ll need to know which books are required for your courses. Many community colleges have websites for their bookstores online where you can look up the required textbooks by entering your course ID numbers.

If you are considering a future career or a professional change, let the winds of change take you into a new industry. For community college students, the American wind energy industry is growing rapidly. Consider the following indicators:

• The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) reports that by the end of 2008, approximately 80,000 people in the United States were employed in the wind industry, up from 50,000 at the end of 2007.
• Wind turbine installations in 2008 were up 50% from the previous year, according to the AWEA report.
• By the end of 2008, the United States had pulled ahead of Germany to lead the world in terms of wind energy production and cumulative wind power generating capacity.
• The 2009 federal stimulus is providing federal funding to colleges and universities in various states to support the development of wind turbine technology.
• The U.S. Department of Energy has developed a Wind and Hydropower Technologies Committee, which is working to realize a goal of having 20% of the energy in the United States produced by wind by the year 2030.

The explosion of the wind energy industry comes at the perfect time for Americans who are out of work and looking to enroll in a community college program that can train them for a new career.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that wind turbine technicians “build or service individual turbines, help with the construction of entire wind farms, or work indoors at

The secret of American community colleges has been revealed – to the entire world – and the population of international students enrolling in American community colleges is rapidly increasing.

The 2009 Open Doors report, issued by the Institute of International Education, provides a snapshot of current trends in international student enrollment in both community colleges and other institutionlated in a 2007 cols of post-secondary education. For anyone interested in the path that international student education is taking in America, the report is essential reading.

Texas and California Lead the Way in International Community College Students

The Open Doors report includes a list of the 40 community college with the highest populations of international students. Texas’s Houston Community College System tops the list; it boasts over 5,000 international students, which is about 9% of its total student population. Two other Texan community colleges also made it into the top ten: the Woodlands’s Lone Star College System, which enrolls over 2,000 international students, and Dallas’s Richland College, which enrolls over 1,200 international students. The percentage of the total student population that is of international origin for these two schools is 4.4% and 7.8%, respectively.

California also appears to lead the way in international student enrollment at community colleges. Like Texas, California is home to three of the top ten community colleges in terms of international student enrollment: Santa Monica College (in Southern California), De Anza College (in the Silicon Valley), and the

Community colleges often see growth in enrollment during economic recessions, as recently laid-off workers look to gain more marketable skills and new high school graduates hope to save money on college tuition. However, the current booming popularity of community colleges can also be attributed to President Obama, who is being hailed as the "Community College President."

Community college teachers, students, and administrators have been buoyed by Obama's continued focus on these historically under-appreciated institutions of higher education. Obama believes that community colleges must play a key role in helping America to recover from the recession and to regain its place as an educational leader in the developed world.

If Obama’s recently unveiled American Graduate Initiative is carried out, community colleges could see an unprecedented period of growth over the next decade.

Wick Sloane writes in Inside Higher Education: "The big Obama accomplishment: “During the height of the economic meltdown, we not only sustained but more than doubled, funding for the Pell Grant program, enabling more than nine million more low-income students to go to college. When you think about it, we’ve given more than 17 million Pell Grants to students from low-income families since the start of our administration than otherwise would have been provided, an average of around three million more each year. Year after year after year!” That’s from the 2013 “swan song” of Martha Kanter, Obama’s first undersecretary of education."

In this video, President Obama explains why community colleges