Redesigning America’s Community Colleges

Redesigning America’s Community Colleges
Author: Thomas R. Bailey
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2015-04-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0674368282

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.

Science and Education for National Defense

Science and Education for National Defense
Author: United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1628
Release: 1958
Genre: Federal aid to education
ISBN:

Reviews achievements of the Soviet Union in science and considers legislation to authorize Federal aid programs for science education.

Fifty State Systems of Community Colleges

Fifty State Systems of Community Colleges
Author: Terrence Alfred Tollefson
Publisher: The Overmountain Press
Total Pages: 492
Release: 1999
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9781570720925

A significant contribution to the literature about American community colleges, this guide describes the community college system in each state in terms of its purpose, history, and the current status of its governance, funding, and enrollment. Forty-eight contributors, who are professional community college leaders, have written about the schools in their respective states. The coeditors all have substantial high-level administrative experience in individual community colleges or state community college systems. This publication provides valuable insights regarding how community colleges began in each state, their amazing growth in the 20th century, and the challenges they face as they enter the next millennium.