This past weekend the Boston Globe ran a story about Obama’s new commitment to strengthening community colleges across the United States and drew upon expert commentary from Sara Goldrick-Rab of the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

The story:

FOR DECADES, American presidents lauded the working stiffs and immigrants who fill our community colleges, but then stiffed them during budget time. That ended this week when President Obama made one of his most welcome proposals of his first year, a $12 billion, 10-year plan to boost community colleges.

Obama called this a “historic step,’’ the biggest recognition of the importance of community colleges since the GI Bill and President Truman’s efforts that doubled the number of community colleges and increased their enrollment by seven times.

The sociologist’s reaction:

The raw infusion of cash for infrastructure, challenge grants, and online classes, if averaged out equally over the next decade, represents a 60 percent increase in direct federal spending on community colleges. Sara Goldrick-Rab, a University of Wisconsin education and sociology researcher, said this was stunning since two months ago she co-authored a Brookings blueprint on transforming community colleges that called for a doubling of direct federal spending, from $2 billion a year to $4 billion a year.

This was close enough for her. “The president is setting a real high bar for himself, a very ambitious bar,’’ Goldrick-Rab said by phone. “Nobody should think this is peanuts. It blew my expectations. The huge key to me is that he was not talking just about job training, which is the traditional way most people and politicians view community colleges. I’m not demeaning job training, but we know how this status stuff works in education. I’ve taken photos of community colleges where the buildings are no place for adults.’’