Why community colleges can’t be fixed — they must be rebuilt
Mordecai Ian Brownlee
January 15, 2026
As America’s demographic, economic, political and technological realities continue to shift, so too do society’s expectations of higher education and its community colleges. Resilient by Design, recently published by the American Association of Community Colleges, is a transformative guide for institutions to embrace the reality that resilience is not about absorbing disruption, but about being designed to adapt.
Historically, the term “relevance” was not something that higher education had to defend. For generations, colleges and universities were seen as the go-to path for success and opportunity. While public confidence in higher education has weakened over the years, according to Gallup data, public trust appears to be rising once again. However, this recovery in trust does not erase a deeper structural challenge: the expectations that learners and employers place on higher education have fundamentally changed, and many institutions remain misaligned with the demands of today’s economy, workforce partners and the learners themselves.
