Democrats and Republicans in the Colorado legislature have a great idea they should quickly send to the governor’s desk. They hope to rename Colorado Springs-based Pikes Peak Community College to Pikes Peak State College. What sounds trivial has immense ramifications.

Sponsors of the name-changing House bill 1280 include Colorado Springs Democratic Reps. Mark Snyder and Tony Exum; Monument Republican Sen. Paul Lundeen; and Colorado Springs Democratic Sen. Pete Lee. It is refreshing to see these leaders agree on a constructive proposal that should benefit all – without regard to race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, socioeconomic status or other traits that should never divide us.

Pikes Peak Community has served as an alternative since its founding in 1968. It and similar institutions have long helped those who aren’t prepared academically and/or financially for a traditional university or college.

In 2019, The Gazette’s editorial board and others urged the legislature to qualify Pikes Peak Community and similar institutions to offer four-year nursing degrees. The affirmative decision will help curtail a nursing shortage that burdens Colorado and most of the rest of the country. Pikes Peak’s nursing program is second-to-none in the Rocky Mountain region.

What the legislature started with nursing it should expand to other appropriate disciplines. Community colleges should move away from the two-year stigma by upgrading their curriculums and names – while continuing the option of two-year trade programs.

The advantages of mainlining community colleges include:

• More competition in higher education to reduce tuition and student housing costs, economically democratizing post-K-12 learning for those traditionally left behind.
• Less need for teenagers to leave home ill-prepared for debaucherous campus party scenes in absence of familial and community support.
• Increased access to practical degrees with more immediate market value than sociology, ethnic studies and other commercially impractical majors encouraged by traditional campuses.
• Upward mobility for smart individuals who, for a variety of reasons, must stay home after high school to support themselves and others.
• Enabling young people to continue long-term with traditional two-year colleges that offer courses to high school students.

Soaring inflation, world instability, the pandemic, and our burgeoning new access to information are quickly changing our culture and economy. Higher education must adapt.

The exclusionary model of legacy postsecondary academies has its place and will certainly survive. Despite a negative new stigma for anti-intellectual woke indoctrination, Ivy League and other elite schools will retain a cache and niche to benefit young valedictorians and the intellectually gifted.

Meanwhile, the days of our higher education system’s white-collar/blue-collar, rich/poor divide are fading. Good riddance. We must reshape higher education for the 21st Century.

We can start by rebranding and upgrading our community colleges in cities and towns throughout the country.

Colorado Springs Gazette editorial board