Washington—On Thursday afternoon, nobody was allowed to say the word “Harvard.” That’s what Paul Osterman told his audience here at a conference hosted by the American Enterprise Institute. After all, Mr. Osterman, a professor of human resources and management at M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, came to discuss community colleges, which serve a much larger proportion of American students than elite, four-year colleges do.
Mr. Osterman discussed findings from a new paper, in which he concludes that “mission creep” hinders community colleges from improving student outcomes. In short, he argued that many community colleges try to do too much, a tendency that perhaps stems from a strength of two-year institutions—their ability to innovate.
Moreover, Mr. Osterman lamented that public discussion about such institutions tends to focus disproportionately on work-force development. Roughly a third of community-college students enroll after completing high school. “Please think of community college not simply as vocational training schools,” he said.
Besides better financial support, what do community colleges need? Mr. Osterman’s paper offers several recommendations, but he suggested that what’s lacking above all is a sense of national urgency. “There is not a political movement around community colleges like there is in the K-12 reform community,” he said. “We know good practice, it’s really a political [and] administrative problem to improve these institutions, not a what-should-we-do problem.”
Charlene R. Nunley, a former president of Montgomery College, in Maryland, said the needs of two-year institutions will become more urgent as more and more students enroll after completing high school, hoping to transfer to four-year colleges. Ms. Nunley also described the challenge of reaching adult students who lack the time and interest to devote to on-campus activities, such as learning communities, that may help them stay engaged. “About community-college students, one thing we know is that they don’t do ‘optional,’” she said.
For that reason, Ms. Nunley suggested that community colleges must consider making more of their programs and services mandatory, even if adopting more-stringent requirements costs institutions some students. “If we don’t put the right programs in place,” she said, “we’re going to lose them anyway.”
8 Responses to A Call to Improve Community Colleges
tac3017874742 - June 3, 2010 at 7:56 pm
I have served as a student services leader in four 2-year colleges in the past 20 years and I know that there are many community-college students who do do ‘optional’ and I’m glad that I came to know these contributors. Ms. Nunley has some good points but she is wrong about her claim that “community-college students…..don’t do ‘optional’. Unfortunately, most community college leaders I’ve worked with are all about themselves rather than about good practice. This partially a result of the pressure on them to look good or be pushed aside by the other folks climbing over them to get to the top.
studentsuccess10 - June 3, 2010 at 8:04 pm
Many but not all community college leaders are promoting their own interests.
bdbailey - June 4, 2010 at 8:02 am
Having taught in a community college, I am a little confused about the idea of making engagement activities mandatory. You can easily divide the student population into two groups. Traditional students are those most likely to benefit from engagement activities and will do optional. Non-traditional (Adult) students have jobs and families and sacrifice just to make time for class. In my experience, these non-traditional students are focused and motivated. They will also have no patience with activities that don’t directly move them in the direction they want to go. Making these activities mandatory would unnecessarily punish the students who are already the most engaged. This approach is yet another example of higher education’s refusal to let go of traditional models.
dank48 - June 4, 2010 at 8:37 am
“By trying to do too much, community colleges shortchange some students”? So the solution is to do more? To institute new programs, even if it costs CCs some students, since if they don’t, they’ll lose those students anyway?Maybe it’s just me, but I thought the idea of community colleges was to make college courses available to the community, ala carte or leading to a degree, as the student might decide. Maybe it’s also just me, but it seems that some professionals just can’t stand the notion of the student deciding what the student does. Sure, some students may get “shortchanged” by community colleges. Never happens at four-year schools, does it?
11132507 - June 4, 2010 at 10:12 am
I agree that the student should be in the driver’s seat, but considering the scrutiny schools find themselves under due to low (but misleading) graduation rates, they feel the need to do more, more, more with less, less, none. Because at some point, someone in power in some cash-strapped state is going to say “my quick-read, soundbite-ready data says your graduation rate is too low, I don’t want to hear any of your excuses, your funding is now completely cut off.” We need to establish and help the public (or at least politicians) understand more realistic measurements of student success in a sector where a sizeable percentage of the students have no desire or need to earn one of our degrees.
deepwater - June 4, 2010 at 11:54 am
I am getting confused. When did higher education become part of the entertainment business? Certainly programs must be relevant and the process should be engaging and compelling. However, last time I checked college wasn’t mandatory despite the seemingly conventional widom of the day. Students are volunteers. They pay money and deserve an outcome that has value. The college provides the program and the student provides the desire to learn. So, how can we distinguish a “ready” learner from one that is not ready? Are the factors cognitive, emotional, environmental, demographic? Can we account for them? What factor would explain the most variance in why students do not persist? It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to figure out that all students coming out of highschool, (I would guess 70% of them) are not ready for higher learning….even when we know from experience that many of them were not ready for secondary school learning. So, now lets put them in a less structured environment and see if they will engage? What am I missing? The reality is that we need enrollemt to pay the bills? Or, perhaps, even more bizarre, every student has the right to fail…regardless of the number of precollege programs one might provide. Fundamentally,the answer to the problem of low graduation rates, high attrition, and mediocre classroom performance lies in a national policy that would require national service by all 18 years olds. There isn’t alot of support for this idea but I believe it gets at the heart of the issue. Just as we have experienced with adult students returning to the classroom, I believe that a student with two years of national service would likely be clearer about why they are attending college, more focused, more motivated and perhaps with a more highly developed work ethic. They may even have resources to pay for college instead of getting mired in student loan debt. Maybe there is a better way to address the issue of how to engage students. However, I am sure this issue will not be solved by national panels designing more means for what is clearly a misunderstoon end.
erikjensen - June 4, 2010 at 3:29 pm
@dank48You are correct that students should decide what they want from community college, but the manner in which we provide that service should be based on evidence. If evidence suggests that mandatory hoops such as placement tests, orientation seminars, and learning communities help students succeed, then we should put them in place.
nebo113 - June 6, 2010 at 12:22 pm
I think Nunley is correct: If we at CC’s don’t put the right programs in place, we’ll lose students. Unfortunately, doing things right means putting pressure on K-12 and that we won’t do. We wouldn’t have so many academically deficient students if K12 would do its job better.