You Work Where?

As an adjunct teacher at two community colleges, I endorse what you are saying about working at them. I thoroughly enjoy the focus on teaching at these institutions. However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to locate full-time teaching positions in certain disciplines as community colleges continue to rely more heavily on adjuncts. There are five community colleges within 100 miles of my house. In the last five years, a total of one full-time teaching position in my area has opened at the five schools combined. However, I can get regular adjunct work every semester. Thus, I am confined to teaching night classes because the day job still pays the bills.

I still do not get the point as to what is this BIG game between two year and four year academic institution? How come I do not hear such issues between Bachelors, Masters and doctoral level academic institution?

I taught at four year for three years. It was MY choice to leave a tenure-track position and go for a yearly renewal faculty position at a community college. My wake-up moment was teaching a class at a community college during the summer. I simply loved it. I went to the academics as I love and have a strong passion to teach. Do I miss research? Not any more!!! Do I regret leaving a faculty position which had a higher salary? I never regretted it!!!

I love the fact that for the last seven years, I am interacting with my students at much different level than I used to do so at a four-year institution. Coincidentally, I taught at a Bachelors, Masters and doctoral institutions during the summer but I always looked forward to my Fall semester!

Raza
_________________________
Raza Khan, Ph.D.

Two years as student at the Community College of Allegheny County. First-rate teachers for the most part. On the whole, easily as good as my Pitt professors.

We need the community colleges. Those of us hanging out at four-year institutions can help by respecting our colleagues who are helping to raise all American boats by bringing more young people into the college population.

I started out as a student at a Community College in southern California (Fullerton College) – and the quality of teaching I received there exceeded what I subsequently got through my academic career of attending both mid-sized and large state land-grant universities. As a professor now at a mid-sized state univeristy I still use those teachers at FC as my yardstick of success.

Thomas, I am not sure what you are referring to. I have never heard of such a requirement.

Well-said, though I’m not sure that it’s exclusively presidents who are driving such mission shifts. Love your last line!

I’ve had many students say the same here, in terms of the quality of teaching as compared to other four-year institutions in the area.

Never heard that one before. Studied the community college (admin, students, culture, etc) extensively at USC and never came across that in the literature either. Where do you get your information?

As one with two master’s degrees and no PhD, I am delighted to be in the company of those who have pursued and achieved doctorate. It is great to have deep discussions in my field with colleagues who have MAs and PhDs. And, let me tell you, I have taught at private 4-year universities full- and part-time as well as my current adjunct job at a local community college and I love the focus on teaching and the diversity of the student body at the CC level.

The only thing I ask (beseech really) is that my learned colleagues with doctorates not flood the community college system, as those of us on the adjunct track who are desperately seeking to switch tracks to a full-time position have a hard time competing for the few openings with candidates who hold PhDs and have years of experience at Elite National U or its equivalent. It may be selfish, but it is my plea nonetheless.

Our students, when they transfer to nearby 4-year institutions, earn a higher GPA there than the students who began their educations at those institutions. If we were passing 90% of them, I promise you that would not be the case.

I began my career teaching full time at the university level. Due to cut backs, I found myself laid off after more than 25 years of teaching, and with no desire to move again, I became certified to teach K-12 and taught high school for five years. Then, due to restructuring, I was transferred to an elementary school about two years ago and entered the unfamiliar world of kindergarten ESOL.

I can retire and have been considering doing so and then teaching as an adjunct at a community college. I’m on the roster as an adjunct at a local college where I have taught a few courses over the past few years.

I am wondering how community colleges view hiring retirees. I miss higher education and working with adults and young adults. The focus on test scores, “duties” unrelated to teaching, and the sense of trying to navigate a broken system has taken it’s toll. I agree that,” it’s not where you start, but where you end up that matters.” I liked where I started, but to end up here in public school, dealing with all its problems and having very little job satisfaction, is not where I want to be much longer.

Darwinian forces are alive and well in higher education.  The key line in Mr. Thrift’s observations that
“the financial model is marginal” will drive most institutions to adapt at a much faster rate.
Most have already lost a sustainable competitive advantage.

The problem is that the university is changing, but not as a conscious, articulate, unified, and coherent response to changing market demand, political and institutional upheavals in funding, technological progress in communication and information processing, and rapid demographic shifts. Instead, colleges are adrift, reacting piecemeal and often self-destructively to these forces. Signs of this drift are a widening gap among universities in what college life means, who attends college, and what defines a college degree. The medium may not be the message, but variance in the delivery system affects how students, employers, and society view the experience, product, and ultimately the necessity of college. As the information tranferred by “I have a college degree” becomes increasingly meaningless, eventually parents, employers, and students will discover that the emperor has no clothes.

So how do we focus this “real debate” that the author encourages. First, we must identify a method for creating reform before it gets imposed on us from outside. Currently, college presidents, faculty committees, boards of regents, and accreditors are the vehicles for designing and delivering reform. That process is broken. Committees of faculty will always defend the status quo, which translates to a holding action to prevent eliminating departments, inconvenient class hours, and replacing aged faculty with young, vibrant PhDs with more current knowledge of their fields, pedagogy, and ability to relate to college-age students. Surveys of presidents reveals how out-of-touch they are as well as their risk bias against change that could threaten their stature, power, perks, are salary. Accreditors are little more than trade associations to defend faculty, analogous to the NCAA is for coaches and ADs: “they need more facilities and funding to do their jobs well.” And 99% of all colleges get reaccredited. Other colleges simply choose their accrediting body, lowering the bar till they find someone to pass them. The process of reformation thus requires the credibility of a national debate that has teeth to establish and enforce its policy reform recommendations for change.

Secondly, real reform requires real data collection. The debate about reform cannot be based on perceptions, conventional wisdom, and prejudice — which all we got right now. Currently, colleges are conservative institutions that rely on public relations to create images, spin data, prevent information release, and do damage control when scandal threatens. The result is little useful information about which to analyze college performance, efficiency, or variance. Efforts are rebuffed to require data release or even collection! NSSE surveys are relegated to public institutions (only two of the top ranked privates comply). USNews has been the most successful in attacking the “all colleges are good in their own way” view: ranking forced colleges to collect and release semi-comparable data, but most of that info is about inputs or grad rates, rather than the student experience, process of learning, or learning outcomes. A real debate means an end to anyone claiming “you cannot measure learning.” If you grade students and write letters of recommendation, you know something about evaluating what’s going on in your classes. Get your sleeves rolled up, and help test and improve the measurement tools! Until we require standardized measurement and release of outcomes, meaningful reform cannot be achieved. 

The sarcasm is often the best part of the whole article and thread. Done well, it tends to expose the weakness of an argument.  

I think part of the crisis is that we in higher education have not defended its inherent worth. Education is a good in itself quite independently of any instrumental value it may have. Even Menand, as I point out in my piece “The Life of the Mind” (http://www.mgpiety.com/M.G._Piety/Blog/Blog.html), fails to acknowledge this. That, I would argue, is our real challenge as educators–to get people to appreciate how education improves the quality of people’s lives, not just the quantity of stuff they can produce and accumulate.

That is a wonderful question:  where do students have the ability to become the scholars we desire, with independent ideas?  I am currently attending an online university.  I find that there is much less room for curiosity and exploration in online courses, because there is less dialogue and socialization between professors and students.  Education is moving at the speed of light, but unfortunately, I am not sure that academia is keeping up. 

Professor Thrift is right on target, I think.  I would note two historic reconceptions of the university, the invention of the research university (Berlin, 1810) and of the “A & M university,” or land-grant university, U.S., 1862.  It is perhaps time for a similarly fundamental redesign of the twenty-first century university, driven in part by the extraordinary development of our ability to manage information beyond the journal and the book.  I would urge that we think expansively and avoid focusing on the narrow implications for ourselves and our own disciplinary silos.

As an independent educational consultant operating in China, I’d like nothing more than for NACAC to ban the use of agents.  The ban could very well boost my own business in China.

But kudos to Mr. Wildavsky for placing the debate about agents in its proper context:  colleges and universities market themselves today in any way they can.  They pay top dollar for “qualified leads” from websites like Zinch.  They bombard kids and parents with electronic communications until kids (and parents) are forced to change their email addresses so as to be left alone.  They are becoming masters of SEO and organic search.  They use every trick in the book to widen the sales funnel.  They build their “brands.” They manage to objectives set forth by US News. 

Higher education in this country likes to think of itself as somehow pure, and tries to isolate itself from the forces of capitalism.  And yet, these institutions do (and must!) compete for consumer dollars, just like any other business.  Given that cold, hard reality, it does seem a little weird to me that some marketing and sales practices are acceptable and others cross an imaginary line (one that no other country in the world recognizes).

I do know that some agents are unethical, and that one would hope (as Marjorie Smith does, in the article quoted by REISBERG) that there are other ways that colleges and universities could recruit international students.  And there are. 

But it’s also true that there are some very good agents out there.  There are also some US colleges and universities that spend the time to train their agents, who work with them closely, and are still able to ensure a good “fit” despite the (theoretical) financial incentives for agents to act against the interest of students.  Not all agents are stupid:  if they don’t serve students well, they won’t have repeat customers and they will lose their relationships with colleges and universities.  In some ways, the longer term financial incentives for agents are aligned with those of their clients on both sides of the transaction.

As Wildavsky states, moral absolutism in this area just “doesn’t seem to fit the facts.”  Still, I’ll be promoting my own self-interest as I advocate for the NACAC ban on agents.  It’s the capitalistic way!