The Academic Crisis of the Community College PDF Download

Author: Dennis McGrath
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791405628
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 200

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Book Description
"What I like most about this book is that the authors do not see community colleges as being separate from other parts of post-secondary education. The usual view of two-year colleges is reductionist -- perceiving them exclusively in functional ways -- vocational, collegiate, remedial, etc. McGrath and Spear see community colleges as part of the full historical unfolding of educational institutions in the United States and, thus, critique them as academic institutions. This is an important work -- more intellectually challenging and wide ranging than virtually all books on the subject." -- L. Steven Zwerling New York University School of Continuing Education "This is a book which will stand out. It takes a genuinely fresh, integrated approach to a difficult and vexing problem. The authors develop a synoptic picture of education in the community college by tracing the ways in which that institution has been shaped. The authors present a convincing framework within which they can discuss the past failures of efforts at reform and put forward their own proposals." -- William M. Sullivan, LaSalle University; co-author Habits of the Heart "The concept of 'remedialization' of the community college is an important contribution to the understanding of community colleges. This work is appealing because it draws from and is influenced by a diversity of works in philosophy, education theory, organization theory, and literary analysis. I especially appreciate the fact that this book does not proselytize the community college credo nor politicize its function." -- Estela M. Bensimon, The Pennsylvania State University

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.

Author: Gregory Malveaux
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000417174
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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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.

Author: Jeffrey R. Docking
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN: 1628951338
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 238

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Book Description
In 2005 Adrian College was home to 840 enrolled students and had a tuition income of $8.54 million. By fall of 2011, enrollment had soared to 1,688, and tuition income had increased to $20.45 million. For the first time in years, the small liberal arts college was financially viable. Adrian College experienced this remarkable growth during the worst American economy in seventy years and in a state ravaged by the decline of the big three auto companies. How, exactly, did this turnaround happen? Crisis in Higher Education: A Plan to Save Small Liberal Arts Colleges in America was written to facilitate replication and generalization of Adrian College’s tremendous enrollment growth and retention success since 2005. This book directly addresses the economic competitiveness of small four-year institutions of higher education and presents an evidence-based solution to the enrollment and economic crises faced by many small liberal arts colleges throughout the country.

Author: Marcia Y. Cantarella
Publisher: Chapel Hill Press
ISBN: 9781597152303
Category : College student orientation
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Shares all the necessary information about the college experience, including deciding whether or not to go to college, figuring out how to pay for college, and learning time management and study skills.

Author: Rebecca D. Cox
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674053664
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
They’re not the students strolling across the bucolic liberal arts campuses where their grandfathers played football. They are first-generation college students—children of immigrants and blue-collar workers—who know that their hopes for success hinge on a degree. But college is expensive, unfamiliar, and intimidating. Inexperienced students expect tough classes and demanding, remote faculty. They may not know what an assignment means, what a score indicates, or that a single grade is not a definitive measure of ability. And they certainly don’t feel entitled to be there. They do not presume success, and if they have a problem, they don’t expect to receive help or even a second chance. Rebecca D. Cox draws on five years of interviews and observations at community colleges. She shows how students and their instructors misunderstand and ultimately fail one another, despite good intentions. Most memorably, she describes how easily students can feel defeated—by their real-world responsibilities and by the demands of college—and come to conclude that they just don’t belong there after all. Eye-opening even for experienced faculty and administrators, The College Fear Factor reveals how the traditional college culture can actually pose obstacles to students’ success, and suggests strategies for effectively explaining academic expectations.

Author: Goldie Blumenstyk
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199374082
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Disinvestment by states has driven up tuition prices, and student debt has reached an all-time high. Americans are questioning the worth of a college education, even as studies show how important it is to economic and social mobility

Author: Mark C. Taylor
Publisher: Knopf
ISBN: 0307593290
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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A provocative report on the state of American higher education discusses the consequences of decades of neglect and covers such recommendations as discontinuing tenure, refocusing on education over research, and tapping new technologies.

Author: James E. Rosenbaum
Publisher: Russell Sage Foundation
ISBN: 1610444787
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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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: Marcelo Suárez-Orozco
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231555490
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
In an age of catastrophes—unchecked climate change, extreme poverty, forced migrations, war, and terror, all compounded by the COVID-19 pandemic—how can schooling be reengineered and education reimagined? This book calls for a new global approach to education that responds to these overlapping crises in order to enrich and enhance the lives of children everywhere. Marcelo Suárez-Orozco and Carola Suárez-Orozco convene scholars and practitioners from a range of disciplines—including anthropology, neuroscience, demography, psychology, child development, sociology, and economics—who offer incisive essays on the global state of education. Contributors consider how educational policy and practice can foster social inclusion and improve outcomes for all children. They emphasize the centrality of education to social and environmental justice, as well as the philosophical foundations of education and its centrality to human flourishing, personal dignity, and sustainable development. Chapters examine topics such as the neuroscience of education; the uses of technology to engage children who are not reached by traditional schooling; education for climate change; the education of immigrants, refugees, and the forcibly displaced; and how to address and mitigate the effects of inequality and xenophobia in the classroom. Global and interdisciplinary, Education speaks directly to urgent contemporary challenges. Contributors include Stefania Giannini, the director of education for UNESCO; development economist Jeffrey Sachs; cognitive psychologist Howard Gardner; Carla Rinaldi, president of the Reggio Children Foundation; and academics from leading global universities. The book features a foreword by Pope Francis.