Redesigning America’s Community Colleges PDF Download

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.

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: George R. Boggs
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807779873
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
This is the first comprehensive and contemporary history of the largest and most diverse public system of higher education in the United States. Serving over 2 million students annually—approximately one-quarter of the nation's community college undergraduates—California’s 116 community colleges play an indispensable role in career and transfer education in North America and have maintained an outsized influence on the evolution of postsecondary education nationally. A College for All Californians chronicles the sector's emergence from K–12 institutions, its evolving mission and growth following World War II and the G.I. Bill For Education, the expansion of its ever-broadening mission, and its essential role in the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education. Chapters cover California’s junior and community colleges’ development, mission, governance, faculty, finances, athletics, student support services, and more. It also examines the successes and ongoing political, financial, and educational challenges confronting this uniquely American educational experiment. Book Features: Encapsulates the evolution and contemporary status of our nation’s largest and most diverse undergraduate education system.Examines how the colleges were influenced by the political, economic, and social issues of the day.Includes new historical information affecting postsecondary education in California.Analyzes some of the most important current and emerging issues that will continue to influence California’s community colleges. Contributors: Carlos O. Turner Cortez, Michelle Fischthal, Jonathan Lightman, Jessica Luedtke, David W. Morse, Joe Newmyer, Mark Robinson, Leslie M. Salas.

Author: Peterson's
Publisher: Peterson Nelnet Company
ISBN: 9780768943269
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 1296

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Book Description
The perfect resource for anyone seeking undergraduate education at a four-year institution in the United States, Canada, or abroad--the trusted source among guidance counselors, parents, and students to find the right college or university for undergraduate study. Peterson's Four-Year Colleges 2021 includes information on every accredited four-year undergraduate institution in the United States and Canada (and many international schools)--more than 2,500 institutions in all. It also includes detailed two-page school descriptions written by admissions personnel for approximately 100 colleges and universities. College-bound students and their parents can access details including campus setting, enrollment, academic programs, entrance difficulty, expenses, student-faculty ratio, application deadlines, and contact information, as well as the most frequently chosen baccalaureate fields of study. Informative and easy-to-read profiles for more than 2,500 institutions--listed alphabetically by state (and followed by other countries), with facts and figures on campus setting, enrollment, academic programs, entrance difficulty, expenses, student-faculty ratio, costs, financial aid, application deadlines, and contact information Approximately 100 two-page in-depth descriptions written by college administrators that offer additional information on academic programs and majors, campus life and activities, academic and campus facilities, study-abroad opportunities, admission requirements, and much more Special section called "The Advice Center" provides insider info on specialized college options--Honors Programs and Colleges, Online Learning, Women's Colleges, Public vs. Private. Helpful articles on surviving standardized tests, preparing to get into college, the "Early Decision" dilemma, paying for college, scholarship guidance, advice for international students applying to U.S. colleges and universities, and more

Author: Loren Pope
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101221348
Category : Study Aids
Languages : en
Pages : 404

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Book Description
Prospective college students and their parents have been relying on Loren Pope's expertise since 1995, when he published the first edition of this indispensable guide. This new edition profiles 41 colleges—all of which outdo the Ivies and research universities in producing performers, not only among A students but also among those who get Bs and Cs. Contents include: Evaluations of each school's program and "personality" Candid assessments by students, professors, and deans Information on the progress of graduates This new edition not only revisits schools listed in previous volumes to give readers a comprehensive assessment, it also addresses such issues as homeschooling, learning disabilities, and single-sex education.

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.

Author: Princeton Review (Firm)
Publisher: Princeton Review
ISBN: 0375429409
Category : College choice
Languages : en
Pages : 1599

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Book Description
Target the schools that best match your interests and goals! TheComplete Book of Collegesprofiles all of the four-year colleges in the U.S. (more than 1,600!) and is the key to a successful college search. Complete Book of Collegesis packed with all of the information that prospective applicants need to know, including the details on: ·Academics ·Admissions requirements ·Application procedures ·Tuition and fees ·Transferring options ·Housing ·Financial Aid ·Athletics …and much, much more! Fully updated for 2010, theComplete Book of Collegescontains all of the latest information about each school. Its unique “Admissions Wizard” questionnaire is designed to help you find schools that meet your individual needs. With competition for college admission at an all-time high, count on The Princeton Review to provide you with the most thorough and accurate guidance on the market.

Author: Edward Fiske
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 116

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Book Description
Every college and university has a story, and no one tells those stories like former New York Times education editor Edward B. Fiske. That's why, for more than 35 years, the Fiske Guide to Colleges has been the leading guide to 320+ four-year schools, including quotes from real students and information you won't find on college websites. Fully updated and expanded every year, Fiske is the most authoritative source of information for college-bound students and their parents. Helpful, honest, and straightforward, the Fiske Guide to Colleges delivers an insider's look at what it's really like to be a student at the "best and most interesting" schools in the United States, plus Canada, Great Britain, and Ireland―so you can find the best fits for you.In addition to detailed and candid stories on each school, you will find: A self-quiz to help you understand what you are really looking for in a college Lists of strong programs and popular majors at each college "Overlap" listings to help you expand your options Indexes that break down schools by state, price, and average debt Exclusive academic, social, and quality-of-life ratings All the basics, including financial aid stats, SAT/ACT scores, and acceptance ratesPlus a special section highlighting the 20 public and private Best Buy schools―colleges that provide the best educational value

Author: Darin Jensen
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
ISBN: 1646424697
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
Two-Year College Writing Studies is a comprehensive overview of the two-year college writing teaching experience within our current political and historical contexts, with examples for teachers to better enact just teaching practices in their colleges. Editors Darin Jensen and Brett Griffiths present grounded, well-theorized, and practical strategies for teachers to implement in classrooms, institutions, and geopolitical contexts to advocate more effectively for their students. Contributors draw on theories of identity, rhetorical third space, and linguistics to articulate a praxis of just teaching. They describe existing institutional challenges and opportunities that foster equity and offer cautionary tales of educational systems dismantled for short-term economic and political gains. Two-year college writing studies—when properly resourced—holds the potential to foster (or undermine) democratic ideals of civic literacy and uplift. Chapters in this volume offer case study examples of changes in departmental practices for reflection, interaction, and assessment that empower faculty to break free and engage directly with institutional, regional, state, and national constraints. By making these resilient practices visible, Two-Year College Writing Studies amplifies the voices and validates the experiences of instructors engaging in this work. It will serve generalists, specialists, and academics interested in the subdiscipline of student success pedagogies and the political histories of two-year colleges and be useful for instructors new to the field, as professional development for veteran instructors, and as an introduction for graduate students entering two-year college writing studies programs.

Author: Arthur M. Cohen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780875895116
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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Book Description
This book is about American community colleges, during the period from 1965-1980, and presents a comprehensive study useful for everyone concerned with higher education. It includes data summaries on students, faculty, curriculum, and many other quantifiable dimensions of the institutions. The data, descriptions, and analyses can be used by administrators--to learn about practices that have proved effective; curriculum planners--who anticipated program revision; faculty members--seeking ideas to modify their classes; and trustees and policy makers--for interesting financial and administrative guidelines.