KPLU Local News
(2010-05-24)
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Senior Jerome Festa (left) suggests a hotel marketing plan to his classmates during their final project in the applied bachelor's in hospitality management program.
Photo by: Charla Bear/KPLU
Lawmakers recently gave the go ahead to create 4-year programs at all of the state's community colleges.
At South Seattle Community College, groups of students figure out room rates, advertising and renovation schedules for hotels they've taken over. It's just a computer simulation, but their profits and grades are on the line.
"If they're going to stay, might as well make them pay," says Senior Jerome Festa.
He's plays the role of general manager in his final project before he graduates with an applied bachelor's degree in hospitality management, a technical degree equivalent to those at 4-year schools.
Festa says it's just what he's needed since he dropped out of college more than a decade ago.
"I found out I was having my first child and it was time for me to figure out what to do," he says. "I looked at a bunch of bachelor's degrees. This one caught me."
The class schedule allows him to work full time. And it's the only program that didn't require him to move his growing family.
Wanted: College Degrees
South Seattle launched the effort a few years ago as part of a pilot to boost the number of residents who achieve bachelor's degrees. Malcolm Grothe, executive dean of technical education at South Seattle, says it's working.
"It targets students that really didn't have other opportunities to get a baccalaureate degree," he says. "And specifically in these niche areas, such as hospitality management, where the local universities aren't providing that."
Some worry that these schools will morph into universities and stray from the mission to provide basic education and workforce training. Most have dropped the word "community" from their names as Bellevue College did last year.
Doug Wadden, executive vice provost at the University of Washington, says the state should build up the 4-year institutions it already has, such as university branch campuses.
"That is going to get us more degree production, faster," Wadden says. "And to continue to build new programs without first realizing the economies of scale for Bothell and Tacoma and Vancouver and elsewhere, that's not good state policy."
Variety of Offerings
Yet some students say traditional colleges don't work for them. Jerome Festa says he thrived because of the small classes and flexibility of South Seattle's bachelor's program.
"There need to be more programs for that working person who wants to go back to school that still has to work," he says. "I don't think there's enough of them."
Festa could soon get his wish. Several community colleges, including South Seattle, have new bachelor's programs in the works.
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