The war between the Trump administration and America’s elite colleges and universities is heating up and will probably continue. But out of the line of fire are our community colleges, which don’t often exhibit the ideological zealotry we see on the famous campuses. What does the future hold for them?

That is the question Dr. Esam Sohail Mohammad examines in today’s Martin Center article.

He sees challenges and opportunities. For one thing, personnel turnover at the four-year schools due to the administration’s policy changes may benefit community colleges.

Also, Mohammad writes: “That strong workforce focus at community colleges may benefit in one additional area, as well: Having in power a party that has increasingly been open to expanding Pell grants to learners pursuing short-term credentials may advance a good idea generally frowned upon by the higher-education establishment.”

But some community colleges have also gone in for race-based programs. They aren’t as big a target as Harvard, of course, but Mohammad suggests that they ought to drop them to avoid trouble.

In sum, Mohammad is optimistic about community colleges, writing, “three principal hallmarks of most community colleges — nimbleness, focus on teaching, and local democratic control — could together be a differentiating toolset as the entire higher-education system reorganizes to accommodate the expectations, legal interpretations, and policy approaches of the new administration.”