The new college try

WHAT MAKES community colleges successful? Four-year colleges point to healthy graduation rates, but community colleges are like cities, where anyone can seek his or her fortune. Students may have families, jobs, and bills in their own names.

This state's community colleges have many missions. In addition to granting degrees and sending students to four-year colleges, they provide technical and professional training and remedial courses. So success can be harder to define -- and achieve.

Nonetheless, graduation rates are a partial indicator of success, and the rate in Massachusetts community colleges is disappointingly low: 16.4 percent for full-time students after three years, compared to 24.7 percent nationally. The challenge is to devise a map of success, as Board of Higher Education chairman Stephen Tocco said last month at the first meeting of the board's new task force on community college retention and completion.

Such a map is sorely needed. College graduates fuel the economy, but finishing college can seem a matter of mystery, luck, or just something that other people do. But there are clear steps to success.

Lynette Robinson, task force member and board vice chancellor, points to a February report from the US Department of Education that looks at what makes students more likely to earn bachelor's degrees.

Some factors are well known, such as rigorous high school programs. Other findings deserve more attention and action. For example, according to the study, all students who take more math are more likely to graduate. Math classes beyond Algebra 2 are particularly beneficial for African-American and Hispanic students. Graduating is also more likely if there's no delay between high school and college and if students remain enrolled continuously, rather than take time off. The task force should also highlight other community college successes, from students who earn certificates to those who take a class that improves their job prospects.

Milton Little, a task force member and president of the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, says stronger community colleges would protect students in an unforgiving world that places a premium on high performance. Little says it's a matter of keeping people out of an underclass and showing that public institutions deserve public respect.

As the federal report says, ''one isn't worried about degree completion for the 5 percent of traditional-age undergraduates who enter highly selective colleges," but rather about ''the rest of the river," particularly the 78 percent who enroll in nonselective four-year colleges and community colleges.

A better education for this majority would make Massachusetts a stronger state.