As a faculty member/administrator at a community college for more than 40 years, the author has seen first hand the role that education can play in transforming lives. He also can see that low tuition, the main pillar of their policy of open access, is giving way in the face of declining state and local support. This certainly is a form of privatization, as tuition revenues substitute for public funds. Rather than resisting this trend, he believes that community college leaders must embrace it as a way of redirecting funds toward the goal of equalizing educational opportunity. In this article, the author discusses some trends in financing higher education that he feels make such a position inevitable. He argues that by giving the community colleges greater control over their budgets and the distribution of financial aid, it will give them a greater ability to focus on their primary mission of expanding access to underserved populations. This option needs to be part of the public debate over the search for more funding.