The White House held its first Community College Summit on Tuesday and the proposal to help community colleges has been met with mixed reviews. President Obama and Dr. Jill Biden, the vice president’s wife who is also a community college professor,  headed the White House Summit on Community Colleges. The goal is to get community colleges to graduate 5 million more students by 2020.

The goal of producing more college graduates will hopefully give the U.S. back its prestigious standing – having the highest proportion of college graduates in the world. We lost that standing years ago and Obama wants it back.

“The idea here is simple,” Obama said Monday when promoting his “Skills For America’s Future” program to develop better partnerships between private industry and community colleges.

“We want to make it easier to connect students looking for jobs with businesses looking to hire. We want to help community colleges and employers create programs that match curricula in the classroom with the needs of the boardrooms.”

It is no secret that community colleges are an affordable alternative to other universities. Since many people can’t afford a four-year degree, a two-year degree is a more feasible option. Also, Obama noted in his summit that a two-year degree is better than not having a college degree.

“They may not go to four-year colleges right away, but the community college system can be just a terrific gateway for folks to get skills,” said Obama. “Some start at a community college and then go on to four-year colleges. Some just get technical training, get a job and then come back maybe five years later to upgrade their skills or adapt them to a new business.”

There are many for-profit schools that are not happy about Obama’s plan.

“They propose sweeping and arbitrary regulations against career colleges while turning a blind eye to the deep and intractable problems among community colleges,” according to a written statement by The Coalition for Educational Success, which represents proprietary colleges and claims to serve more than 200,000 students at over 300 campuses in 33 states. “A look at the facts would suggest that the administration is attacking the wrong target and their proposed regulations would hurt the economy, jobs — and most of all students.”

The coalition argues that, Obama is “unnecessarily shortchanging millions of students and a wide swath of the nation’s future workforce.”

Clearly, Obama disagrees with the coalition. The 2009 stimulus bill also had $3.5 billion in Pell grants aimed at helping low-income students at hundreds of community colleges, according to White House officials, as well as $1 billion in workforce training programs at community colleges.

“The idea here is simple: we want to make it easier to connect students looking for jobs with businesses looking to hire,” Obama said. “We want to help community colleges and employers create programs that match curricula in the classroom with the needs of the boardroom.”

The plan will make available more than $2 billion in competitive funds to community colleges over the next four years, the White House said.