The Diverted Dream

The Diverted Dream PDF Author: Steven Brint
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199729263
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 325

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Book Description
In the twentieth century, Americans have increasingly looked to the schools--and, in particular, to the nation's colleges and universities--as guardians of the cherished national ideal of equality of opportunity. With the best jobs increasingly monopolized by those with higher education, the opportunity to attend college has become an integral part of the American dream of upward mobility. The two-year college--which now enrolls more than four million students in over 900 institutions--is a central expression of this dream, and its invention at the turn of the century constituted one of the great innovations in the history of American education. By offering students of limited means the opportunity to start higher education at home and to later transfer to a four-year institution, the two-year school provided a major new pathway to a college diploma--and to the nation's growing professional and managerial classes. But in the past two decades, the community college has undergone a profound change, shifting its emphasis from liberal-arts transfer courses to terminal vocational programs. Drawing on developments nationwide as well as in the specific case of Massachusetts, Steven Brint and Jerome Karabel offer a history of community colleges in America, explaining why this shift has occurred after years of student resistance and examining its implications for upward mobility. As the authors argue in this exhaustively researched and pioneering study, the junior college has always faced the contradictory task of extending a college education to the hitherto excluded, while diverting the majority of them from the nation's four-year colleges and universities. Very early on, two-year college administrators perceived vocational training for "semi-professional" work as their and their students' most secure long-term niche in the educational hierarchy. With two thirds of all community college students enrolled in vocational programs, the authors contend that the dream of education as a route to upward mobility, as well as the ideal of equal educational opportunity for all, are seriously threatened. With the growing public debate about the state of American higher education and with more than half of all first-time degree-credit students now enrolled in community colleges, a full-scale, historically grounded examination of their place in American life is long overdue. This landmark study provides such an examination, and in so doing, casts critical light on what is distinctive not only about American education, but American society itself.

Resources in Education

Resources in Education PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description


Diverted Dream

Diverted Dream PDF Author: Steven G. Brint
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780191504815
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description


Gateway to Opportunity?

Gateway to Opportunity? PDF Author: J. M. Beach
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000980782
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Can the U.S. keep its dominant economic position in the world economy with only 30% of its population holding bachelor’s degrees? If the majority of U.S. citizens lack a higher education, can the U.S. live up to its democratic principles and preserve its political institutions? These questions raise the critical issue of access to higher education, central to which are America’s open-access, low-cost community colleges that enroll around half of all first-time freshmen in the U.S. Can these institutions bridge the gap, and how might they do so? The answer is complicated by multiple missions—gateways to 4-year colleges, providers of occupational education, community services, and workforce development, as well as of basic skills instruction and remediation.To enable today’s administrators and policy makers to understand and contextualize the complexity of the present, this history describes and analyzes the ideological, social, and political motives that led to the creation of community colleges, and that have shaped their subsequent development. In doing so, it fills a large void in our knowledge of these institutions.The “junior college,” later renamed the “community college” in the 1960s and 1970s, was originally designed to limit access to higher education in the name of social efficiency. Subsequently leaders and communities tried to refashion this institution into a tool for increased social mobility, community organization, and regional economic development. Thus, community colleges were born of contradictions, and continue to be an enigma. This history examines the institutionalization process of the community college in the United States, casting light on how this educational institution was formed, for what purposes, and how has it evolved. It uncovers the historically conditioned rules, procedures, rituals, and ideas that ordered and defined the particular educational structure of these colleges; and focuses on the individuals, organizations, ideas, and the larger political economy that contributed to defining the community college’s educational missions, and have enabled or constrained this institution from enacting those missions. He also sets the history in the context of the contemporary debates about access and effectiveness, and traces how these colleges have responded to calls for accountability from the 1970s to the present.Community colleges hold immense promise if they can overcome their historical legacy and be re-institutionalized with unified missions, clear goals of educational success, and adequate financial resources. This book presents the history in all its complexity so that policy makers and practitioners might better understand the constraints of the past in an effort to realize the possibilities of the future.

Here to Complete Dr. King's Dream

Here to Complete Dr. King's Dream PDF Author: Lillian Cohen Kovar
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761804024
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 230

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Book Description
This is an ethnographic study of an inner city college spanning two decades after the institution of open admission in 1970. Its students are predominantly African-American and Hispanic, though increasing numbers come from countries throughout the developing world. These first generation college students, many of them beyond customary college age, come to school encumbered with the burdens of poverty, minority status, and inadequate early schooling. Their teachers in 1990 recall with nostalgia and anguish the metamorphosis of the college during the decades of the 1970s and the 1980s. This book deals directly with the most crucial policy issue confronting the community college today: what is to be its mission. As the latest entrant to higher education, the community college now claims one-half of all new matriculants and most minorities. An evaluation of its triumphs and failures is in order.

How Do You Know?

How Do You Know? PDF Author: J.M. Beach
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351598473
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
This book defines the concept and practices of literacy through a discussion of knowledge, information media, culture, subjectivity, science, communication, and politics. Examining the ways in which the spread of literacy and education have caused culture wars in pluralist societies since the 16th century, the author reviews an interdisciplinary array of scholarly literature to contend that science, and more broadly evidence-based inductive arguments, offer the only reliable source information, and the only peaceful solution to cultural conflict in the 21st century. With a focus on the multifaceted practice of literacy-as-communication as embedded within larger social and political processes, this book offers a comprehensive study of literacy through five core topics: knowledge, psychology, culture, science, and arguing over truth in pluralist democracies. The central thesis of the book argues that we require a new literacy that incorporates reading and writing with advanced cognitive and epistemological skills. Today’s citizens need to be able to understand the basic cognitive and cultural processes through which knowledge is created, and they need to know how to evaluate knowledge, peacefully debate knowledge, and productively use knowledge, for both personal decisions and public policy. How Do You Know? The Epistemological Foundations of 21st Century Literacy is an interdisciplinary study that will appeal to scholars across the sciences and humanities, especially those concerned with pedagogy and the science of learning.

Information Inequality

Information Inequality PDF Author: Herbert I. Schiller
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415907651
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 172

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Book Description
The first extended critical biography of Brooks, perhaps one of the most influential literary critics of the 20th century. Royden draws on interviews and extensive research to recreate the New Criticism milieu which included John Crowe Ransom and I.A. Richards, and which Brooks advocated as a method of scholarship that became the standard for several generations. The biography does not separate the life from the work, and constitutes an important survey of criticism since the 1930s in addition to being a hallmark biographical study. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

For the Common Good

For the Common Good PDF Author: Charles Dorn
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501712608
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
Are colleges and universities in a period of unprecedented disruption? Is a bachelor's degree still worth the investment? Are the humanities coming to an end? What, exactly, is higher education good for? In For the Common Good, Charles Dorn challenges the rhetoric of America's so-called crisis in higher education by investigating two centuries of college and university history. From the community college to the elite research university—in states from California to Maine—Dorn engages a fundamental question confronted by higher education institutions ever since the nation's founding: Do colleges and universities contribute to the common good? Tracking changes in the prevailing social ethos between the late eighteenth and early twenty-first centuries, Dorn illustrates the ways in which civic-mindedness, practicality, commercialism, and affluence influenced higher education's dedication to the public good. Each ethos, long a part of American history and tradition, came to predominate over the others during one of the four chronological periods examined in the book, informing the character of institutional debates and telling the definitive story of its time. For the Common Good demonstrates how two hundred years of political, economic, and social change prompted transformation among colleges and universities—including the establishment of entirely new kinds of institutions—and refashioned higher education in the United States over time in essential and often vibrant ways.

Understanding Inequalities in, through and by Higher Education

Understanding Inequalities in, through and by Higher Education PDF Author:
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9460913083
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 156

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Book Description
Aiming to bridge theory and practice, each chapter outlines relevant literature, highlights key areas for consideration, and offers suggestions for real-world application. The book will be of interest to researchers, university students, expedition organisers, and outdoor instructors.

The Transfer Experience

The Transfer Experience PDF Author: John N. Gardner
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000978516
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description
Co-published with At last there is a handbook that everyone in higher education can use to help increase transfer student success. This comprehensive resource has been brought together to meet the need for a truly holistic approach to the transfer experience. The book brings together research, theory, practical applications, programmatic illustrations, case studies, encouragement, and inspiration, and is supplemented by an online compendium for continual updates of resources, case studies, and new developments in the world of transfer.Based on a totally different way of thinking about, understanding, and acting to increase transfer student success, The Transfer Experience goes far beyond the traditional, limited view of transfer as a technical process simply about articulating credits, a stage of student development, or a novel enrollment management strategy. Rather, the book introduces a stimulating array of new perspectives, resources, options, models, and recommendations for addressing the many needs of this huge cohort – making the academic, civic, and social justice cases for improving transfer at both transfer-sending and transfer-receiving institutions.