Arthur Call commutes three hours roundtrip to Ivy Tech Community College in Peru for his anatomy class because similar courses on campuses closer to his Indianapolis home are packed.

“Classes around the state were just full,” said Call, a full-time student who takes the rest of his classes in Indianapolis. “Thank God it’s only Tuesdays. I just have to drive there once a week.”

President Barack Obama wants to invest about $12 billion in community colleges with the aim of seeing an additional 5 million students graduate by 2020. Many schools are already bursting at the seams with droves of displaced workers hit by the recession competing with traditional students seeking an education bargain.

“All community colleges are not prepared to take on those potentially large numbers of students,” said Debra Bragg, a professor and director of the Forum on the Future of Public Education at the University of Illinois.

The Obama administration notes that 5 million more community college graduates doesn’t necessarily mean there will be that many more students — schools could increase graduation rates to reach the goal. And the administration says money from the initiative to rebuild aging facilities and establish online classes would help handle the extra students.

Much of the money for the nation’s 1,200 community colleges comes from local and state sources. That funding has been hard to come by during the economic downturn.

“It could be potentially extremely challenging if there’s not increased funding at the federal, state and local level to make that happen,” Bragg said.

The conundrum comes at a time of intense growth for the more than century-old community college system, which already educates more than half the nation’s undergraduates.

A record high of about 11.5 million Americans ages 18 to 24, or nearly 40 percent, attended college in October 2008, according to a study of census data recently released by the Pew Research Center. Almost all of the increase of 300,000 students over the previous year came at two-year schools.

Enrollment numbers are not yet available for 2009, but the American Association of Community Colleges estimates enrollment is up at least 10 percent.

Ivy Tech President Thomas Snyder says his school can handle more growth, in part by finding savings internally and relying on philanthropic and community donations. The school will not expand too much and find itself with empty classrooms if an economic turnaround slows future enrollment.

“We’re cautious in making sure that we don’t make expenditures on staffing, for example, or other critical areas that we can’t sustain,” Snyder said.