Author: Thomas R. Bailey Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674368282 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 301
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.
Author: Clifford S. Peterson Publisher: American Association of Community Colleges(AACC) ISBN: Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 52
Book Description
The growing demand for colleges and universities to be accountable to their publics and the recognition that assessment is of little value without a systematic planning effort have led many institutions to turn to the concept of Total Quality Management (TQM). This pamphlet discusses the process of adapting TQM to a typical community college, a process called Continuous Quality Assurance (CQA), and is divided into six chapters. The first chapter, "Forces for Change in Higher Education," describes the recent calls for accountability and the responses made by higher education to those calls. Chapter 2, "An International Focus on Quality," reviews the TQM theory, its practice in Japan, and emerging trends toward quality in business and industry. "Quality in Higher Education," the third chapter, discusses applications of TQM to higher education and some major differences between business and education, including the absence of profitability in education, increased departmental loyalties in educational institutions, and the lack of a perceived crisis in education. Chapter 4, "Continuous Quality Assurance in a Community College," outlines the philosophical approach behind CQA, while chapter 5, "Assessment and Planning for Continuous Quality Assurance," describes the mechanisms (i.e., databases, alumni follow-up, and effective assessment services) that must be in place to implement CQA. Finally, "Implications of a Quality Focus" highlights the benefits of CQA, including providing evidence of institutional effectiveness, a mechanism for preparing funding proposals, and a vehicle for identifying and setting institutional priorities. (Contains 12 references.) (BCY)
Author: Robert L. Pura Publisher: Taylor & Francis ISBN: 1000978079 Category : Education Languages : en Pages : 172
Book Description
Co-published with An Agenda for Leaders / A Text for Leadership CoursesWhile community colleges promote American ideals of democracy, opportunity, and social mobility; they provide a vital, accessible, and affordable education for nearly 12 million first-generation, economically-disadvantaged, and minoritized students; are engines of local workforce and economic development; and enroll nearly half of all students who go on to complete a four-year degree; they remain the least resourced and the least funded institutions in the United States.Offering the insights of the former president of Greenfield Community College—located in Massachusetts’s poorest rural county—who was a national leader in community college and higher education organizations as well as closely involved with local businesses and organizations; and commentary and background data provided by Professor of Higher Education and Chair of the Department of Leadership in Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this book addresses the challenges that community colleges face as they strive to achieve their complex missions in a changing world.By providing vivid accounts of the diversity of students that community colleges serve, the complexity of their missions—from dual enrollment with high schools, to vocational training, adult education, and transfer to four-year colleges—and the role they play in supporting and responding to the needs of local business, as well in regional economic development, the authors make the case for increased investment, while at the same time making apparent to all stakeholders—from policy makers and trustees to college leaders, faculty and staff—how they can contribute to the vital development of human capacities.Community colleges are open-access, train nearly 80% of all first responders, graduate more than half of new nurses and health-care workers, and have a history of nimbleness and responsiveness to community needs, and can play a vital role in training for tomorrow’s jobs, over 60% of which will, in the next decade, require some college education. The first four chapters set the scene, demonstrating the key foundational linkage between education, community, and democracy, presenting a history of the community college movement, illustrating what’s involved in building strong and reciprocal community relationships, and covering a whole panoply of leadership issues such as governance, institutional culture, facilities planning, resource development, accreditation, and crisis management.The second part of the book presents Bob Pura’s accounts of his visits to five community colleges, each representing different geographic regions, institutional size, urban and rural locations, and how they respond to the varied racial and ethnic populations from they draw their students and establish themselves as anchors in their communities.As well as offering an important message to state and federal policy makers, this book serves as a roadmap for aspiring leaders of community colleges as well as a text for leadership and higher education courses. College leaders may find it useful for internal training and learning community groups.
Author: Paul Tough Publisher: Mariner Books ISBN: 9780544944480 Category : EDUCATION Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
The bestselling author of How Children Succeed returns with a devastatingly powerful, mind-changing inquiry into higher education in the U.S.
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Publisher: National Academies Press ISBN: 0309452961 Category : Medical Languages : en Pages : 583
Book Description
In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.
Author: City University of Hong Kong. Community College Publisher: ISBN: Category : Total quality management in higher education Languages : en Pages : 253
Author: Thomas R. Bailey
Author: Clifford S. Peterson
Author: Allana Elovson
Author: 
Author: Robert L. Pura
Author: Joanna Evelyn Spaulding
Author: Paul Tough
Author: National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Author: City University of Hong Kong. Community College
Author: American Anthropological Association