Maine seems to finally be getting out of the mindset that a
high school diploma is a terminal degree. But it still has a long way
to go.

Southern Maine Community College (SMCC) recently announced that five
years after transitioning from a technical college, it has more than
doubled in size, from 2,019 students to 5,100. That increase far
outpaces the 57 percent increase across all the schools in the
community college system and has created capacity issues – forcing the
system intended to make college accessible to all to turn away
prospective students in Maine’s well-paying professions such as nursing
and electrical engineering.

The response has been to an ambitious plan to expand SMCC’s footprint
beyond its picturesque seaside campus in South Portland with satellite
locations at the Maine Mall, Bath and soon, the site of the current
Naval Air Station in Brunswick.

SMCC President James Ortiz celebrated the school’s largest incoming
class in a written statement, “The goal of the community college system
is to increase the pool of Mainers attending college, and we are seeing
that goal realized.”

But that appraisal seems to be countered by developments at the
University of Southern Maine (USM), where falling enrollment has
exacerbated a budget deficit and led to recently constructed dorms
still smelling of new paint and not old socks.

USM seems to be competing with SMCC for students – and their tuition checks – and losing.

Some at USM have griped that rather than being a feeder institution for
USM, where students with associate degrees in hand, move on to get a
bachelor’s degree, SMCC students are going out into the workforce.

Not so, says Helen Pelletier, interim director of public affairs for the community college system.

The number of students going on to four-year institutions is increasing by roughly 20 percent per year, Pelletier counters.

It is also argued that SMCC is not so much increasing the pool of
post-graduate degree seekers as cannibalizing those students who
already intended to jump in that pool, an assertion Pelletier also
disputes.

SMCC should not be made a villain for its success. That USM cannot make
a case for its own value to a growing number of would-be students is
discouraging to say the least.

The trend seems to point to this competition getting fiercer as a
shrinking school-age population makes the pool of prospective
applicants ever shallower.

One alternative is to focus on the more than one third of Maine
children who either never complete high school or have no intention of
moving on to college once they do.

That works out to roughly 6,000 students.

Another solution is more intensive encouragement of even more of those
who achieve an associate degree to keep at their education. We are past
the time when a four-year degree is a required accomplishment on most
resumes. Now that more Mainers realize a high school diploma is not a
terminal degree, they need to be reminded that neither is an associate
degree.