Top Two Issues Facing Community College Essay Example for Free

Top Two Issues Facing Community College Essay This topic came up repeatedly as I was researching critical issues for higher education in the community college environment, the vo-tech training schools, and the four-year postsecondary schools. Grace Chen (2011) writes â€Å"Community college leaders have not yet formed a consensus on what it means for students to be college ready, which could impact the quality of the education received†. This is a problem is because the receiving institutions make the entrance requirement and the core subjects (math, English, reading) in these various schools use various tests/standards for placement of students. Also, for the community college, there is no guarantee that adult students will attend in cumulative semesters so there is much more re-teaching required. Community college students can be as young as 16 and still in high school very driven to attend a post-secondary environment, or they can be a middle-aged person who is divorced, a single parent, just laid-off trying to gain some skills to re-enter the workforce. This â€Å"major issue facing community colleges, according to this study, is finding the right incentives and support to keep students in school† (Chen, 2011, Keeping Students in School, para.1). Arizona participated in a multi-state study that specifically looks at community colleges as the â€Å"Road to Nowhere.† Complete College America (2012) has a four step solution to â€Å"close remediation exit ramps†. These steps are: strengthen high school preparation, start students in college-level courses with built-in, co-requisite support, embed needed academic help in multiple gateway courses, and encourage students to enter programs of study when they first enroll. Transferability While I knew in my experience as a K-12 educator that this is a concern I had no idea that it was considered a â€Å"critical issue† to the point of earning my honor of spot number two! Working with credit transfer agreements (Dual Enrollment, Articulation, Concurrent Enrollment) I am aware of the difficulty that community colleges have in tracking data for students. As part of a federal/state R-POS (rigorous program of study) team I’m also acutely aware of how difficult it is to get data from a community college. In addition to the above-mentioned reasons, there is a consensus that transferability is a very difficult problem in the community college environment. According to the College Board (2011), â€Å"four-year institution leaders have been warned before about the need to enroll more transfers†. One reason is because during recessions and economic declines high school graduation rates tend to decline. This is a typical time for a community college to increase enrollment. â€Å"Despite considerable effort already generated†¦levels of transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions can be improved† (Pusser Levin, 2009, Executive Summary, para. 9) References Chen, Grace. June 2, 2011. What are the Biggest Issues Facing Community Colleges Today? New Study has Answers. http://www.communitycollegereview.com/articles/354 College Board. 2011. Improving Student Transfer from Community Colleges to Four-Year Institutions —The Perspective of Leaders from Baccalaureate-Granting Institution. http://advocacy.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/11b3193transpartweb110712.pdf Complete College America. April 2012. Remediation-Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere. http://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/files/CCA%20Remediation%20ES%20FINAL.pdf Pusser, Brian and Levin, John. December 2009. Re-imagining Community Colleges in the 21st CenturyA Student-Centered Approach to Higher Education. http://www.americanprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/issues/2009/12/pdf/community_colleges_reimagined.pdf