eBook PDF Download Digital Library
Author: J. Scherer
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2014-04-02
Total Pages: 455
ISBN-13: 1137331003
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Taking on the cherished principle that community colleges should be open to all students with a high school education, Scherer and Anson argue that open access policies and lenient federal financial aid laws harm students and present the case for raising the minimum requirements for community college entry.
Author: Juliet Lilledahl Scherer
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Published: 2014-04-02
Total Pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9781137336019
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Community Colleges and the Access Effect takes on one of the community college world's most sacred principles - that every student with a high school diploma or GED equivalent should have the opportunity to enter college. In carefully researched detail, two community college educators present a convincing case for why the open door to college admission must be eased closed and what must be done academically, politically, and financially to bring about this critically needed reform. Describing how the practice of open college admission developed and how the nature of the college student has changed over the century that it has been in effect, Scherer and Anson argue that raising the minimum requirements for college entry and enforcing existing Federal Student Aid regulations will make better use of public funds, strengthen academic programs, increase secondary student engagement, improve student completion rates, and protect unprepared students.
Author: J. Scherer
Publisher: Springer
Published: 2014-04-02
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 1137331003
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Taking on the cherished principle that community colleges should be open to all students with a high school education, Scherer and Anson argue that open access policies and lenient federal financial aid laws harm students and present the case for raising the minimum requirements for community college entry.
Author: Thomas R. Bailey
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2015-04-09
Total Pages: 301
ISBN-13: 0674368282
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
Author: James E. Rosenbaum
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
Published: 2007-01-04
Total Pages: 280
ISBN-13: 1610444787
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Enrollment at America's community colleges has exploded in recent years, with five times as many entering students today as in 1965. However, most community college students do not graduate; many earn no credits and may leave school with no more advantages in the labor market than if they had never attended. Experts disagree over the reason for community colleges' mixed record. Is it that the students in these schools are under-prepared and ill-equipped for the academic rigors of college? Are the colleges themselves not adapting to keep up with the needs of the new kinds of students they are enrolling? In After Admission, James Rosenbaum, Regina Deil-Amen, and Ann Person weigh in on this debate with a close look at this important trend in American higher education. After Admission compares community colleges with private occupational colleges that offer accredited associates degrees. The authors examine how these different types of institutions reach out to students, teach them social and cultural skills valued in the labor market, and encourage them to complete a degree. Rosenbaum, Deil-Amen, and Person find that community colleges are suffering from a kind of identity crisis as they face the inherent complexities of guiding their students towards four-year colleges or to providing them with vocational skills to support a move directly into the labor market. This confusion creates administrative difficulties and problems allocating resources. However, these contradictions do not have to pose problems for students. After Admission shows that when colleges present students with clear pathways, students can effectively navigate the system in a way that fits their needs. The occupational colleges the authors studied employed close monitoring of student progress, regular meetings with advisors and peer cohorts, and structured plans for helping students meet career goals in a timely fashion. These procedures helped keep students on track and, the authors suggest, could have the same effect if implemented at community colleges. As college access grows in America, institutions must adapt to meet the needs of a new generation of students. After Admission highlights organizational innovations that can help guide students more effectively through higher education.
Author: Arthur M. Cohen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2013-08-27
Total Pages: 594
ISBN-13: 111871881X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →For more than thirty years, The American Community College has been the go-to reference for faculty, administrators, trustees, state-level officials, and researchers concerned with the role of community colleges in the American educational system, the services they provide, and their effects on students and surrounding communities. Now in its sixth edition, The American Community College includes a new chapter on student outcomes and accountability; a case for reconceptualizing general education around critical thinking, civic engagement, and sustainable development; and an appendix examining the ascendant for-profit sector. The sixth edition also incorporates expanded analyses of recent trends within the community colleges, including vertical expansion; cross-sector collaboration; student and faculty characteristics; enrollment patterns; revenue generation and state allocation patterns, including performance-based funding; distance learning; and statewide efforts to improve transfer and articulation. In addition, the authors include a response to contemporary criticisms of the institution. Comprehensive in scope, the sixth edition of The American Community College is designed for anyone concerned with the role and purpose of community institutions in American higher education. The descriptions and analyses of each of the institution’s functions can be used by administrators who want to learn about practices that have proven successful at other colleges, curriculum planners involved in program revisions, faculty members seeking ideas for modifying their courses, students preparing for careers in community colleges, and trustees and officials concerned with college policies and student progress and outcomes. Each chapter of the book includes guiding questions for reflection and discussion.
Author: Deborah J. Boroch
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Published: 2010-02-22
Total Pages: 198
ISBN-13: 0470606614
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Student Success in Community Colleges As more and more underprepared students enroll in college, basic skills education is an increasing concern for all higher education institutions. Student Success in Community Colleges offers education leaders, administrators, faculty, and staff an essential resource for helping these students succeed and advance in college. By applying the book's self-assessment instrument, colleges can pinpoint how their current activities align with the most effective proven practices. Once the gaps are identified, community college leaders can determine the best strategic direction for improvement. Drawing on a broad knowledge base and illustrative examples from the most current literature, the authors cover organizational, administrative, and instructional practices; program components; student support services and strategies; and professional learning and development. Designed to help engage community college leadership and practitioners in addressing the practices, structures, and obstacles that enhance or impede the success of basic skills students, the book's strategies can be tailored to various institutional levels, showing how to unite faculty, staff, and administrators in a cooperative effort to effect institutional change. Finally, Student Success in Community Colleges reveals how investing in a comprehensive basic skills infrastructure can be a financially sustainable model for the institution as well as substantially beneficial to students and society. "This is a most unusual and valuable book; it is packed with careful analysis and practical suggestions for improving basic skills programs in community colleges. Compiled by a team of practicing professionals in teaching, administration, and research, it is knowledgeable about what has been done and imaginative and practical about what can be done to improve the access and success of community college students." K. Patricia Cross, professor of higher education, emerita, University of California, Berkeley "For its first hundred years the community college was committed primarily to access; in its second hundred years the commitment has changed dramatically to success. This book provides the best road map to date on how community colleges can reach that goal." Terry O'Banion, president emeritus, League for Innovation, and director, Community College Leadership Program, Walden University "This guide is the most comprehensive source of information about all facets of basic skills or developmental education. It will be invaluable not just to community college educators across the nation, but also to those in high schools and four-year colleges who share similar problems." W. Norton Grubb, David Gardner Chair in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley
Author: George B. Vaughan
Publisher: Amer. Assn. of Community Col
Published: 2006
Total Pages: 68
ISBN-13: 0871173727
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Kevin James Dougherty
Publisher: SUNY Press
Published: 1994-01-01
Total Pages: 392
ISBN-13: 9780791419557
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →This book systematically analyzes the evidence on four key issues that have divided commentators on the community college: The community college's impact on students, business, and the universities; the factors behind its rise since 1900; the causes of its swift vocationalization after 1960; and what direction the community college should take in the future.
Author: J. M. Beach
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Published: 2023-07-03
Total Pages: 213
ISBN-13: 1000980782
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →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.
