No one is happy with the portion of Gov. Wes Moore’s proposed budget that would cut community college funding by about $23 million. But the proposal has proven useful in one respect: It illuminated the simple truth that, while the governor claims to prioritize education, he does not mean all education.
 

Community colleges provide an essential service for both high school and college students, offering affordable classes and credits that can transfer to the workplace or more traditional four-year colleges. While the governor justifies his proposed cut by pointing to enrollment drops in the decade ending with the pandemic, the community college option remains popular with a huge subset of Maryland’s students, and enrollment declines appear to be reversing. Maryland’s community colleges saw an 8.3% system-wide enrollment hike in 2023, for example. And there is growing interest in community colleges among students who want workforce training, but not necessarily academic credit.
 

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