Gateway to Opportunity?
Book (italiano):
Central to the debate about access to higher education, and about how to develop the educated workforce vital to economic development, are America's open-access, low-cost community colleges that enroll around half of all first-time freshmen in the United States. Can these institutions bridge the gap, and how might they do so? The answer is complicated by their multiple missions---as gateways to four-year colleges, and as providers of occupational education, community services, and workforce development, as well as of basic skills instruction and remediation.<BR><BR>To enable today's administrators and policy makers to understand and contextualize the complexity of the present, this history describes and analyzes the ideological, social, and political motives that led to the creation of community colleges, and that have shaped their subsequent development. In doing so it fills a large void in our knowledge of these institutions.<BR><BR>The "junior college," later renamed the "community college" in the 1960s and 1970s, was originally designed to limit access to higher education in the name of social efficiency. Subsequently leaders and communities tried to refashion this institution into a tool for increased social mobility, community organization, and regional economic development. Thus, community colleges were born of contradictions, and continue to be an enigma.<BR><BR>This volume examines the institutionalization process of the community college in the United States, casting light on how this educational institution was formed, and for what purposes, and how has it evolved. It uncovers the historically conditioned rules, procedures, rituals, and ideas that ordered and defined the particular educational structure of these colleges. It focuses on the individuals, organizations, ideas, and the larger political economy that contributed to defining the community college's educational missions, and that have enabled or constrained this institution from enacting those missions. The author also sets the history in the context of contemporary debates about access and effectiveness, and traces how these colleges have responded to calls for accountability from the 1970s to the present.<BR><BR>Community colleges hold immense promise if they can overcome their historical legacy and be re-institutionalized with unified missions, clear goals of educational success, and adequate financial resources. This book presents the history in all its complexity so that policy makers and practitioners might better understand the constraints of the past in an effort to realize the possibilities of the future.
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