How and why did you decide to produce Discounted Dreams?
Learning Matters is determined to cover critical and under-reported issues. Certainly community colleges have not received the attention they deserve, or the scrutiny. I attended a meeting about community colleges and was struck by how little I knew about them, and so when a funding opportunity arose, my colleagues and I grabbed it.

How would you describe this special? What does it set out to accomplish?
First of all, we hope it's compelling television, stories about real people whose dreams will intrigue viewers. We want these stories to illuminate larger social issues, because we have come to believe that the American economy would grind to a halt without community colleges and, at the same time, that they must do a better job. So one could say that we have three hopes for our special: 1) inform the general public of the significance of the community college; 2) create pressures on the institutions to perform better; and 3) create pressure on policy makers to provide more support for them.

What are the most shocking discoveries you made about community colleges?
I personally was stunned to see how woefully inadequate the data about results is. We found it virtually impossible to get verifiable numbers about just about any aspect of community colleges nationally, whether it's the percent needing remedial education, the transfer rate, the dropout rate, whatever. Some community college people say they don't have the money to keep track of everything, but that struck me as a lame excuse or perhaps a smokescreen. How can you improve if you don't really know how you’re doing?

A second shocker: how few incentives there are to succeed, particularly in remedial programs. That has to change.

What do you hope people will learn from watching Discounted Dreams?
That community colleges matter; that we are well on the way to creating a 2-tier system of higher education, with all the attendant social risks and consequences; and that many of the men and women working in the system are real heroes.

What are the most important changes that you feel need to be made to ensure the success of community colleges in today's world?
Three things at once: more funding AND an effective system of incentives for success AND a decent data gathering system. These three things have to happen, and soon.

Why is this documentary relevant now?
I leave that to the viewers to decide. If we’ve done our job, they will find it immediately relevant. If not, there's always "American Idol"!