Redesigning America’s Community Colleges

Redesigning America’s Community Colleges PDF Author: Thomas R. Bailey
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674368282
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Book Description
In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.

Redesigning America’s Community Colleges

Redesigning America’s Community Colleges PDF Author: Thomas R. Bailey
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674368282
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 301

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.

The Costs of Completion

The Costs of Completion PDF Author: Robin G. Isserles
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421442086
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
To improve community college success, we need to consider the lived realities of students. Our nation's community colleges are facing a completion crisis. The college-going experience of too many students is interrupted, lengthening their time to completing a degree—or worse, causing many to drop out altogether. In The Costs of Completion, Robin G. Isserles contextualizes this crisis by placing blame on the neoliberal policies that have shaped public community colleges over the past thirty years. The disinvestment of state funding, she explains, has created austerity conditions, leading to an overreliance on contingent labor, excessive investments in advisement technologies, and a push to performance outcomes like retention and graduation rates for measuring student and institutional success. The prevailing theory at the root of the community college completion crisis—academic momentum—suggests that students need to build momentum in their first year by becoming academically integrated, thereby increasing their chances of graduating in a timely fashion. A host of what Isserles terms "innovative disruptions" have been implemented as a way to improve on community college completion, but because disruptions are primarily driven by degree attainment, Isserles argues that they place learning and developing as afterthoughts while ignoring the complex lives that define so many community college students. Drawing on more than twenty years of teaching, advising, and researching largely first-generation community college students as well as an analysis of five years of student enrollment patterns, college experiences, and life narratives, Isserles takes pains to center students and their experiences. She proposes initiatives created in accordance with a care ethic, which strive to not only get students through college—quantifying credit accumulation and the like—but also enable our most precarious students to flourish in a college environment. Ultimately, The Costs of Completion offers a deeper, more complex understanding of who community college students are, why and how they enroll, and what higher education institutions can do to better support them.

International Students at US Community Colleges

International Students at US Community Colleges PDF Author: Gregory Malveaux
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000417174
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
This volume documents the experiences of international students and recent international initiatives at US community colleges to better understand how to support and nurture students’ potential. Offering a range of case studies, empirical and conceptual chapters, the collection showcases the unique curricula and diverse opportunities for career development that colleges can offer international students. International Students at US Community Colleges addresses issues of student access, enrolment barriers, college choice, and challenges relating to integration in academic and professional networks. Ultimately, the book unpacks institutional factors which inhibit or promote the success of international students at US community colleges to inform faculty, student affairs, administration, and institutional policy. With international students’ declining enrollment, this book considers the measures being taken by community college officials to bring continued access and equity to international students. Offering insights from a range of international scholars as well as on-the-ground case studies, this text will benefit researchers, academics, and educators with an interest in multicultural education, international and comparative education, and higher education management. Those specifically interested in educational policy and the sociology of education will also benefit from this book.

Community Colleges as Cultural Texts

Community Colleges as Cultural Texts PDF Author: Kathleen M. Shaw
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791442906
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
Questions whether, and how, community colleges confront the challenges of diversity and provide real opportunities for upward mobility.

Defending the Community College Equity Agenda

Defending the Community College Equity Agenda PDF Author: Thomas W. Bailey
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801884470
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Publisher description.

What Excellent Community Colleges Do

What Excellent Community Colleges Do PDF Author: Joshua S. Wyner
Publisher: Harvard Education Press
ISBN: 1612506518
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 184

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Book Description
In What Excellent Community Colleges Do, Joshua S. Wyner draws on the insights and evidence gained in administering the inaugural Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. This book identifies four domains of excellence—degree completion, equity, student learning, and labor market success—and describes in rich detail the policies and practices that have allowed some community colleges to succeed in these domains. By starting with a holistic definition of excellence, measuring success against that definition, and then identifying practices and policies that align with high levels of student success, the author seeks to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about improving student success in community colleges.

National Profile of Community Colleges

National Profile of Community Colleges PDF Author: Kent A. Phillippe
Publisher: Amer. Assn. of Community Col
ISBN: 0871173654
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 201

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Book Description
This book offers a national view of trends and statistics related to today's community colleges. The new edition includes completely revised text as well as updates to charts and tables on topics such as enrollment, student outcomes, population, curriculum, faculty, workforce, and financial aid. Informative narrative introduces and provides context for the data. An excellent resource for presentations, public information, media relations, and long-range planning. Chapter 1, Community Colleges Past and Present, recounts the history of community colleges and summarizes some of the more pressing issues facing them today. Chapter 2, Community College Enrollment, provides detailed information and demographics concerning enrollment at community colleges and puts it in perspective with the rest of higher education. Chapter 3, The Social and Economic Impact of Community Colleges, describes the impact of community colleges on students and their communities through measures such as degree and certificate completion, employment data, and educational attainment within the general population. Chapter 4, Community College Staff and Services, offers a view of staffing at community colleges, from the presidency and senior administration to faculty and support staff. Chapter 5, College Education Costs and Financing, focuses on the financial aspects of community colleges, as they affect the institution and its students. Chapter 6, A Look at the Future, presages trends and issues that will define the community college of the future. The book also contains a Preface, Glossary, References, Index, and About the Authors. (Contains 39 figures and 77 tables.).

Austerity Blues

Austerity Blues PDF Author: Michael Fabricant
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421420678
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Beyond Equity at Community Colleges

Beyond Equity at Community Colleges PDF Author: Sobia Azhar Khan
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000590682
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
This volume proposes that the work of community colleges has expanded beyond equity into providing a true barrier-free learning environment for students, one that is attuned to justice. The essays included here serve as evidence and examples of the productive ways in which educators may bring theory and practice to bear on each other, which in turn may allow community college faculty, staff, and administrators to reexamine the role of a community college as a space for justice. Topics explored with this volume include liberatory educational practices in and out of the classroom, transforming classrooms into the site of collaboration and contestation, and unique visions of how to promote opportunity for marginalized students. Ultimately, the goal of this edited volume is to explore and encourage community college educators to understand the integral role they play in bringing transformative justice to their students and their communities.

Understanding Community Colleges

Understanding Community Colleges PDF Author: John S. Levin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415881269
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 290

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Book Description
Understanding Community Colleges provides a comprehensive review of the community college landscape--management and governance, finance, student demographics and development, teaching and learning, policy, faculty, and workforce development--and bridges the gap between research and practice. This contributed volume brings together highly respected scholars in the field who rely upon substantial theoretical perspectives--critical theory, social theory, institutional theory, and organizational theory--for a rich and expansive analysis of community colleges. The latest text to publish in the Core Concepts in Higher Education series, this exciting new text fills a gap in the higher education literature available for students enrolled in Higher Education and Community College graduate programs. This text provides students with: A review of salient research related to the community college field. Critical theoretical perspectives underlying current policies. An understanding of how theory links to practice, including focused end-of-chapter discussion questions. A fresh examination of emerging issues and insight into contemporary community college practices and policy.