The import of community colleges as drivers of immediate and medium-term economic development cannot be gainsaid.  This report shows how valuable and significant those institutions are in the United States, even from a narrow economic perspective. 

They can sharpen their focus on serving economic development, it is true; and the report makes a good case for that.  But as an educator, I want them also to keep their focus on giving people the direct virtues of education as well—the capacity to research and think in a more disciplined and focused manner.  The community college scholars I have known from my own time in college until today have typically had those virtues; something there about the intentionality, the deliberateness, of going to community college makes them more serious people, I find.  Community college leaders and educators cannot forget that fundamental duty, and fundamental power they have. 

I have habitually said, and still partially believe, that the really special part of American higher ed—the part that is most distinctive of our system—is our liberal arts colleges.  But in fact that's not entirely accurate.  In fact community colleges are a much larger, and more powerful, and equally (if not more) distinctive fact about our system of higher ed.  They deserve more respect, and they definitely deserve more funding.  Were they properly funded, the rewards, economic and existential, would be truly amazing.