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Just outside the otherwise quiet, scholarly office of Gary L. Rhodes, president of J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College (JSRCC), construction is under way. It isn’t noisy, which is good, but there are building materials lying about, and large sections of Burnette Hall that once housed J. Sarge’s library are cordoned off as more classrooms and faculty offices are prepared. A new library/technology center, meanwhile, is being built nearby on the college’s woodsy Parham Road campus, one of three JSRCC campuses in the Richmond region.
And the new library, classrooms and faculty offices are just the beginning. In the fall, ground will be broken for a new Workforce Development Partnership Center, which presently operates across the road at the Northrun business park. Two years ago, JSRCC and John Tyler Community College merged their separate but comparable programs under the Community College Workforce Alliance, which offers non-credit courses and customized training for businesses. The new center should open its doors in 2010.
“Last year,” Rhodes says with evident pride, “we provided instruction to more than 2,200 employees for 800 different employers. Everything we do here is workforce-related. We offer 70 career programs.”
Rhodes is a font of statistics—and understandably so. This is a time when the leaders of older and more prestigious institutions of higher learning are reluctant to speak in terms of numbers. When they do, they have to talk about tuition hikes, endowments that have lost value and costs that keep rising.
Rhodes, by contrast, has the numbers on his side. “In October of 2008, when the recession really became apparent, we were at an all-time high in enrollment,” he says. “Now our numbers are even greater.”
And why not? When tuition at a private, four-year university can cost $50,000 a year, more and more Americans are looking carefully at community colleges and liking what they see. This includes not only parents of youngsters who are beginning the college-application ordeal but also adults in mid-career looking to make themselves more valuable to employers—and, for the laid off, more attractive to potential employers. As ABC News reported in March, community colleges “are a cost-effective way to reinvent the resumé in a changing economic landscape.”
That’s just one of the attractions of these alternatives to four-year programs. Community colleges have been the on ramp to higher education for many families. “One third of our students are first-generation college students, meaning the first in their family to attend college at all, as I was,” Rhodes says.
Community colleges can also be the on ramp to other institutions. About a third of J. Sarge students are in what Rhodes calls “transfer courses.” That means the credits will be readily accepted by four-year colleges.
“I’ve been in four community college systems in four states, and Virginia’s is the best,” he says. This superiority is based in part on a guaranteed transfer program worked out in 2001 with the state’s four-year colleges. “Basically,” Rhodes explains, “you get an A-minus average in your courses here, and the University of Virginia, William and Mary, and Virginia Tech have to admit you.”
J. Sarge is already the #1 feeder school to Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU). “VCU likes our students because of their high graduation rate once they enter VCU,” Rhodes says. “About half of the freshmen who enroll there graduate in six years. But of those who take 30 credits or more at J. Sarge and then go to VCU, 70 percent complete their degrees in six years.”
That it can now take six years, rather than the traditional four, for American college students to earn their diplomas suggests how much higher education—and how the profile of the student—is changing. “Seventy-five percent of J. Sarge students are part-time students,” Rhodes says. “Many of them work full-time jobs. Some are single parents. The average age is 27. That includes kids who are 19 and just out of high school. But a lot of them are in their 30s.”
Founded in 1972, and named for the late lt. governor who championed the community college system, J. Sarge has emerged as a major player in a state long admired for the quality of its public and private institutions of higher learning. At last count—and, again, the numbers are increasing—18,000 students attend J. Sarge for credit courses and another 15,500 for non-credit courses under the Workforce Alliance program.
“People just don’t fully appreciate the impact of J. Sarge,” Rhodes says. “Since our founding, we’ve helped a massive number of people. Some 250,000 have taken for-credit courses here.”
Look for these numbers to continue to rise, as J. Sarge comes into its own. Many institutions of higher learning are struggling, but community colleges have never seen a brighter future. In November 2007, J. Sarge began the public phase of the largest capital campaign in community college history. “Our goal was to raise $15 million, and we already have $14.1 million in gifts and pledges,” Rhodes says. “If it weren’t for the recession, we would have wrapped it up already.”
J. Sarge is also itching to build a fourth academic campus. Henrico County has set aside 100 acres in the eastern part of the county, near Varina, for a community college campus, the possibilities of which bring out the visionary in Rhodes. “Imagine a beautiful 220-acre recreational park, in the middle of which is a J. Sarge campus,” he says. “Within five to seven years, we will have a presence there—a few buildings at first. That part of the county is only now taking off, and it will fill in faster than the western part.”
And J. Sarge is eager to be part of that growth. It’s something the institution, and the county, are getting used to.
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