Thank the Community Colleges!

I would not be the 4-year college professor I am without the foundation received while working toward my A.S. at a community college. A good community college prepares the student for the rigors of upper level coursework. A supported, and supportive, community college prepares the timid to make the 4-year commitment. A caring community college recognizes the academic potential of students despite weaknesses, and offers support to overcome academic weaknesses. Inequitable treatment of any branch of the higher education system hurts everyone.

Thank you Tidewater Community College for lighting my path. Keep up the good work.

pj, at 8:05 am EST on February 11, 2008

What is never mentioned is that the CC also counts as success those students who are taking certificate classes and such for workforce folks. People who decide who gets funding tend to look only at the number of students who get Associate’s degrees, but a student who gets that certificate is a success; the student who is taking his/her core courses before going to university (thus not necessarily getting a diploma) is a success; the student who takes and passes developmental studies to improve reading, writing, and math skills to be better able to function in society and not to pursue a degree is a success; students who take courses just because they want to take courses (for fun, as it were) are successes. Where are they counted in our success rates?? They aren’t...

Judy Harris, Professor, at 9:10 am EST on February 11, 2008

Caliber of community college education

After diplomatic and business careers, I have been a community college adjunct history professor since 1992. What I have discovered is that our community college survey courses are better taught than at virtually all four-year colleges in New Jersey. This I hear from students who have transferred from Rutgers, Kean, Roan, and elsewhere. I also hear this from my students who have gone on to four-year colleges.

These students tell me that, at their four-year institutions, often the classes:1) were large and impersonal; 2) taught by graduate students who seemed little interested and relatively unskilled to teach; and 3) especially in the sciences, some of the teachers had great difficulty with the English language.

Conversely these students applaud: 1) the relatively small size of community college classes; 2) the fact that the teachers are there because they wish to teach; 3) that the teachers, often in an informal network, are there to encourage and assist the students.

I live in an affluent Somerset County (NJ) township where ‘community college’ has a stigma with a great majority of students and, especially, their parents. In my opinion, this bias is proving harmful to a number of students who would benefit from their community college ‘apprenticeship.’

I am a Yale graduate. My first Yale history class was a combined lecture/discussion group. The lecturer, to about 400 students, was a distinguished professor and Pulitzer Prize winner who used yellowed notes that seemed not to have been revised in years. My discussion group was conducted by a bright new Ph. D. He was excellent in our 20+, twice-a-week meetings.

I maintained contact with this savvy prof over the years. Ultimately he earned a distinguished chair at Yale and became president of Yale University. A few years ago I sent him my detailed curriculum for my American Civilization II course. His comment: “This is more rigorous than what we offer our freshmen students.”

I lament the fact that community college education often is demained by a wide range of individuals who are, for a variety of reasons, ill-informed. For me community colleges are the soul of a community. They provide quality education to a broad range of individuals, young and old, who benefit from the low cost, the close physical access, and the quality hands-on teaching. With degrees from Yale, Penn, and MIT, I appreciate the differencebetween distinguished universities and community colleges. Nonetheless, measured on a level playing field, I would match the caliber of survey-course education available at community colleges with what the vast majority of four-year institutions offer to their students.

Keith Wheelock

keith wheelock, Adjunct professor at Raritan Valley Community College, at 9:25 am EST on February 11, 2008

Importance of community colleges

Dr. Mellow is right on target with her remarks about community colleges. If you accept the assumption that in the future just about everyone will need some form of postsecondary education in order to be succesful in the workplace, then the majority of those individuals will becoming to our community colleges and not to our four year colleges and universities.(at least not initially for those who chose the transfer route) The good students(let’s say the top 25% in any high school graduating class) will not have a problem, for the most part, in going to college. That remaining 75% is where the real challenges will be and the community colleges can do it when they have the necesary resources to do it. The challenges are even greater because of the fact that we are open door rahter than selective in our admissions process. The future of this country’s workforce will be very contingent upon the success of our community colleges, so let’s make sure they get the support they need.

carl hite, president at cleveland state cc, at 10:10 am EST on February 11, 2008

equity?

More money for less qualified students?

Are we truly achieving equity by paying more attention to ‘disadvantaged’ or ‘challenged’ students?

It seems that this is a push for higher education to emulate the high school system which spends dollars to produce the graduates that must then be compensated for at the community college level. This compensation allows them to be at the same level as high school graduates who are prepared for higher education, but at higher cost.

We ignore the above average who can excel in the name of equality, thereby bringing both lower and higher toward a median.

My opinion is that our nations education system is driving for mediocrity, we pursue it with dollars, time and energy. It’s not politically correct to say it, but equality is a myth. There are those with gifts in certain areas and others with gifts in other areas, but if we spend enough money, time and energy we can achieve mediocrity.

D, at 10:30 am EST on February 11, 2008

Regional differences

What we now call the “community college” originally began in the late nineteenth century and early 1900’s as a way of screening out candidates for 4 year colleges.

This was the idea of William Rainey Harper, the University of Chicago president. The plan was to divert unsuitable candidates into appropriate vocational or “terminal” programs, thereby freeing up professors and upper-classmen for genuine scholarship and research at the colleges, modeled on the German research university. This was Harper’s plan.

However, once the culture of aspiration and professionalism took root, and the American dream became identified with having a college education, the explosive growth of the colleges created make-shift “13th” grade classes scattered at high schools all over the nation. Typical of the time, these were modeled on the classical Latin and Greek language curriculum, which was still required for admission to America’s colleges in the 1900s.

Bowing to market pressures, these informal classes of wanna-be college-men eventually were absorbed into the higher education system, newly christened as “junior colleges,” and associated with public 4 year schools as feeders. Everyone was happy.

That is, everyone in the North.

But what they didn’t know was that, at least in the South, most of the instructors were still high school teachers that could not hope to match Northern standards.

This gap still persists today, enshrined in SACS lack of faculty minimum standards. The December 2006 changes in which the Southern Association voted to side-line faculty qualification requirements for their members are a good example of this. These backward moves simply reflect SACS inability to get control of the out-of-field instructor problem in the South, which averages 34% (SACS-Eldridge E. Scales, 1969).

Furthermore, as Florida it tries to magically turn its community colleges into 4-year schools, fails address the widespread and persistant out-of-field faculty problem.

With dual enrollment offerings sprouting up overnight at High Schools like mushrooms, the state of Florida has learned that it also has significant faculty credentialing problems that threaten its ambitious plans for seamless articulation.

In the frenzy of being able to relocate colleges in high schools, the distinction between secondary and postsecondary education has disappeared. High schools have become branch campuses of the CC’s, funded by the states and staffed by high school teachers, and the CC’s have become high schools (the result of their own widespread faculty QC problems). See link.

Glen S. McGhee, Dir., at Florida Higher Education Accountability Project, at 11:00 am EST on February 11, 2008

CC and 4-yr — Useful categories?

Apparently there are big differences across community colleges, just as there are across 4-yr colleges. Perhaps the differences are great enough that we lose information by lumping the institutions in this way? The suggestion that CCs perform remedial work for colleges doesn’t resonate with me; in fact, I try to teach courses that will put my students ahead of the juniors and seniors of most any college, if and when my students transfer to 4yr college.

No doubt the remedial work that is done in some CCs, as well as in some 4-yr colleges, is laudable and important. But as several comments have already indicated, many CCs provide excellent courses. Some of us try to be the best; certainly we don’t find that all 4-yr courses are more advanced than ours, nor that our students are in CC only because they “couldn’t get in to” a 4-yr college.

Rod Bell, Adjunct at College of DuPage, at 11:30 am EST on February 11, 2008

ON POINT!

Mellow was right on point!In addition, one of the more significant problems facing Community Colleges that the majority of folks outside the community college system have no idea how the community colleges in America have been transformed and have morphed into “Mini four year schools". I say that from the stand point of our Community Colleges offer and deliver an equally and just as rigorous two year curriculum as any other 4 year college.

“D” from Feb. 11th inferred to the community college students are somehow inferior or defective students and not comparable to the four year college students. While there are a significant number of students who come to community colleges because a four year college is just not an option, the number of students coming directly out of high school into the community college system with the intent of transferring to a four year school in increasing nation wide every single year.

There is legislation in several states that is in the works that will allow students to come to a community college for two years and transfer to in-state colleges at the same tuition rate as the community college depending on GPA and financial need. The Articulation agreements between community colleges and universities as well as the Dual Enrollment agreements between community colleges and high schools are growing exponentially.

Our community colleges prepare students to succeed not only in the workforce but the same time to continue their educational endeavors at 4 year colleges and Universities and succeed there also.

The community colleges of yesteryear are no longer.

Jeff Levy, CAD Program Head at NRCC, at 12:35 pm EST on February 11, 2008

Yeah? But in Alabama...

This article might as well be written in a foreign language for people in Alabama. In Alabama the CCs are funded with the P-12 Schools (which gives them a bigger piece of the state funding pie than than the public 4-years. Faculty and staff at CCs are paid on the same scale and get the same benefits as their counterparts in P-12—the scale is higher and the benefits better than similar positions at 4-year institutions.

When politicians want to pad their income with state money (or pad their family’s or friend’s income) they don’t mess around with penny-ante 4 year colleges, they go directly to the giant Community College trough where they can earn 50-60 thousand dollars a year as a consultant and never have to show up or do anything and no one notices or cares. Atleast until recently.

Socialchild, at 3:45 pm EST on February 11, 2008

Community Colleges

Scott,I read so many of your wonderful articles. This is truly one of the best and one of the most important. I work with struggling students, as a speech, language and learning disabilities specialist. Many of these students go to community colleges where they learn what they were never taught in high school. They are taught to read, write and compete. They are taught problem solving and critical thinking skills. Their self-concepts are salvaged. Their caring advisors listen. They are not warehoused and they learn to find their way in the world.

Thank you again.

Ghita, Speech, Language and LD Specialist at Private Practice, at 4:40 pm EST on February 11, 2008

On Costs- Let’s be Fair

I find that I agree with almost all that Gail Mellow has said in defense of community colleges. They are under-appreciated, have their success measured in the wrong way and deserve more praise and less criticism. Given the educational level that most of these students enter with, equitable funding formulas would require that more be spent per student and not less. However, the expenditure (cost) figures used in the article are misleading. It is not accurate to compare the average cost of all students at a 4-year college with that of a 2-year college in the way that she has. Aside from the fact that most 4-year colleges are expected to do more than just educate undergraduates, it is important to compare the cost of educating students at the two types of colleges by focusing on only what it costs the 4-year college to educate students in the first two years of college. The cost figures cited in the article for the 4-year colleges (probably from NCES) include upper division undergraduates and at least some graduate students. It costs more to educate these students than lower division students. It has been quite a few years since I have worked with this data but, 10 years ago it was the conventional wisdom that it costs (or we spend) about twice as much on the students at 4-year colleges as we do on those at the 2-year college (at the time $14,329 vs $7,020). I found that a more accurate calculation would show that the difference was in the $1000 to $1500 per FTE range. This lower figure was arrived at by subtracting out research and public service expenditures and most importantly, adjusting the 4-year data to include only lower-division students. So yes, we spend more on lower-division students at the 4-year college but not the more than double figure quoted in the article. As more and more students use the 2-year college as a gateway to a bachelor’s degree, the task is to make sure that we focus on equal outcomes if the 2-year colleges are to serve as an avenue for social mobility.

Richard Romano, Research Fellow at Cornell University, at 7:35 pm EST on February 11, 2008

I daresay that the distinguished academicians who have written numerous textbooks, advocated teaching advancements, and the like would be highly offended with some of the disparaging comments about cc students. Many of them began as developmental education students. In addition, when C. says that students coming out of high schools should be prepared for university, I agree, but the reality is that with mandatory testing that requires “teaching to the test” so that only a portion of the needed curriculum is taught; teachers in many districts being told that they cannot flunk any students; students who are perfectly capable but are perhaps from less-than-adequate situations (lack of education/educational importance/ misdirection of goals/and the like); students who have been out of school for many years and are uncertain of their skills, many incoming students of ALL ages are not ready, but they deserve the chance to succeed. I have had numerous former students who have gone off to “prestigious” colleges/universities come back to tell me that their composition classes and other classes where they had to write complex essays were easy because of the rigors of my classes...and I am not as demanding as many of my colleagues. And many of these students began in DS classes. Do NOT disparage these students as a collective body...that is a HUGE mistake. You can’t do that any more than you can say that all students coming out of universities are brilliant scholars who earned their degrees. Of course many are, but the reality is that not all of them are all that brilliant. Large numbers of cc students are not unsuited to higher ed at universities. Can you tell that I am rather offended?

Judy Harris, Professor, at 9:45 am EST on February 12, 2008

College for All

I wholeheartedly agree that community colleges have been the stepchildren of higher education. Yes, some begin with developmental studies, but that’s because many of our high schools are not doing their jobs! Community college gives many students the chance to go to college in an environment that nurtures educational skills and attitude. A student who succeeds (and we make sure they have every edge to do so) will go on to other educational or training opportunities s/he may have not had access to without community college instruction. Many also cannot affort the university or get accepted by one. Their first two years at the CC provides them the chance to complete a four-year degree at the university! I am proud to serve as an instructor in an open-door system. In the near future (if not already), everyone will need a college education; the CC programs will provide this, but we need to be more than poor stepchildren. Higher education needs to adopt us with all privileges! —jayeraye (a CC instructor)

Janice Stuart, Durham Technical Community College, at 1:00 pm EST on February 14, 2008

Bravo

Bravo to Dr. Mellow. In every urban locale in this country, CCs are the backbone — or should we say the brace — for a community that would lose it balance without that support. With high school graduation rates at around 50% and poverty at the core, the work of community colleges prevents worsening of the situation. It is very expensive to dedicate the necessary time and energy to remedial education, but it’s definitely necessary.

Theodore Levitt, Director, College Communications at Miami Dade College, at 10:25 am EDT on April 4, 2008