Community Colleges

Putting the Community Back into the College

Tying community college curricula to the demands of corporate boardrooms will not solve our country’s problems.

A College Education? Or Diminished Expectations?

The new, “reimagined” CUNY community college marches students to terminal degrees in narrow fields.

Texas Hold Him

Members of the San Antonio community college system’s board of trustees ignore faculty concerns and reward their chancellor with a generous contract.

How to Climb Down from Top-Down Leadership

The challenging work to improve on the bureaucratic model of governance at community colleges requires both cooperation from administrators and commitment from faculty members.

The Casualties of the Twenty-First-Century Community College

From eliminating tenure and stifling academic freedom to relying on a corporate curriculum, recent developments at community colleges have taken their toll.

The State of the Institution Formerly Known as “The People’s College”

Assessing the ides of marching globalization and privatization—and shrinking public funding—on community colleges.

From the Editor: The Conveyor Belt to Nowhere

Communications theorist James W. Carey noted that the world has always seemed on the verge of imploding. “The shadow of the Apocalypse is cast across all our sophisticated imaginings.”

Carey was too sophisticated and occasionally dark of mood himself to believe that the apocalypse was merely a minor demon that could be called forth for comfort, then dismissed.

From the General Secretary: The Freedom to Engage

The pitch made by community colleges to prospective students is not unlike that made by liberal arts colleges. Both emphasize their small classes and the personal attention students receive from professors who know their names and are available to engage and mentor them.

Community Colleges in the AAUP

During my almost thirty years as a professor at Cincinnati State Technical and Community College, I have witnessed extraordinary changes. When I began this journey, my institution was a technical college with a mission to teach students who were primarily interested in earning terminal technical degrees to get a job. Our students came from diverse backgrounds and all walks of life. We had recent high school graduates as well as much older students looking for opportunities to be retrained.

“I Have No Idea What You Do Out Here”: Community Colleges, Academic Freedom, and the University as Global Marketplace

We are professors of history and English, respectively, at Kingsborough Community College, located in Manhattan Beach, Brooklyn. Founded in 1963 during a rapid nationwide expansion of community colleges, Kingsborough, which serves some thirty thousand students a year, is one of six two-year institutions that are part of the City University of New York, the nation’s third-largest university system. Kingsborough is perched on Brooklyn’s Atlantic edge, on the site of a former merchant marine facility.

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