This is in the Post which has an on-line edition. I hope you find it
interesting.
Ellen
http://www.WashingtonPost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1997-04/15/009L-041597-
idx.html
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[Image] Community Colleges: Drop-In Centers No More
[Image] By Clifford Adelman
Tuesday, April 15 1997; Page A19
Talk The Washington Post
Central
Section: With nary an acknowledgment from anybody, the community
discuss hot college has recently been moved to center stage in American
topics of education. Under the president's vision to expand the
the day universality of education from kindergarten through "grade
online. 14," the role of this unique institution will change. The
community college may make the difference as to whether we
All get from here -- to there. And the degree it offers, the
Editorials associate's, may be elevated to an extent that it puts
and Op-Ed pressure on high school diplomas to mean more than they now
columns do.
from this
morning's How might these happy circumstances come about? And what
Washington are the most important adaptations community colleges must
Post. make in order for the president's vision to work?
All Data from the National Center for Education Statistics tell
editorials us that most community college students use the institution
and for ad hoc purposes: completing high school-level education
commentary with remedial courses, trying out college-level academic
from work and transferring to a four-year college, taking three
Sunday's or four courses in a specific occupational field to qualify
Washington for a job. All of these involve short-term and part-time
Post engagements. Thus, while half of those who enter
Outlook postsecondary education attend community colleges, only 23
section. percent of those who attend community colleges stay long
enough to earn an associate's degree.
The data also demonstrate the centrality of the community
college in a pattern of educational consumerism that is
both healthy for the society and sheer hell for higher
education planning. In metropolitan areas such as
Washington, students are likely to take courses wherever
the combination of day, time, subject matter and price fit:
Montgomery Community College in Maryland, Catholic
University in the District of Columbia, George Mason in
Virginia. Over 60 percent of U.S. college students now
attend more than one institution as undergraduates, and a
community college is usually one of them. The traditional
transfer pattern from community college to four-year
college has thus been eclipsed by a combination of reverse
transfer (four-year to two-year), and alternating and
simultaneous enrollment in both types of schools.
The vision of universal opportunity K-14 education changes
the arena in which community colleges function in three
ways. First, more students would come to the community
college directly from high school. How many? Among 1992
high school graduates, 79 percent planned to enter
postsecondary education immediately after high school; by
1994, 75 percent had done so. Let us assume we can push
this "access rate" even higher and pick up the 4 percent
difference between those who planned to go and those who
went, about 150,000 per year. Given the academic profiles
of those students, two-thirds will go to community
colleges.
Numbers, however, are not the story. One hundred thousand
new students per year is not real enrollment pressure, but
the way these -- and other community college students --
must attend in order to meet the new conditions of
financial aid will result in more full-time and less ad hoc
engagements. Students will have to show true progress.
The second major change, then, will cast the community
college a credentialing institution more than a drop-in
center. When that happens, the associate's degree becomes
more prominent in the landscape of credentials. And when
the associate's degree becomes more prominent, it will be
shored up. Its sometimes baroque requirements (for example,
a swimming test) will be revised. Its standards of content
will also be clarified: For example, what does "college
algebra" mean -- as distinguished from "intermediate
algebra" in high school? Some states are struggling with
these questions. The elevated position of the associate's
degree will help resolve them.
Community colleges have historically worried about
articulation with four-year colleges. But their new
position in a K-14 system will require more attention to
articulation with high schools. To protect the integrity of
the associate's degree, for example, they may have to say,
"We are not going to teach remedial reading any more to
matriculated students. But we will develop supplementary
pre-college outreach programs with high schools to improve
reading skills." According to a 1995 survey conducted by
the National Center for Education Statistics, only 28
percent of community colleges participate in these
pre-collegiate outreach programs now. That percentage will
have to double. More important, the content of the outreach
programs will have to stress academic preparation instead
of (as is currently the case) social skills development.
Third, staffing patterns in community colleges should
change. In 1992, there were a quarter-million faculty in
community colleges, but more than half were part-time. If
the institution concentrates on seeing students through to
associate's degrees, the number of faculty should expand
and the ratio of part-timers contract in order to ensure
the continuous monitoring that degree candidates need.
Among new faculty, too, we must increase the proportion of
minority teachers who can be effective with students from
second-language backgrounds, principally because Latino and
Asian students are more likely to attend community colleges
than students from other groups.
For community colleges, then, the K-14 vision implies far
more than bringing new students to higher education. The
vision puts them in a position to turn the whole system
around -- if slowly. They have a weighty set of challenges
on their table.
The writer is a senior research analyst with the U.S.
Department of Education.
© Copyright 1997 The Washington Post Company
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