Dive Brief:
- Thomas Bailey, director of the Community College Research Center at Columbia University’s Teachers College, describes a host of ideas in Redesigning America’s Community Colleges with coauthors Shanna Smith Jaggars and David Jenkins.
- The book supports the creation of guided pathways for students, where they pick general fields of interest and counselors help them structure their courses to meet the needs of those fields.
- The entire college would need to be redesigned around such pathways, and ensuing progress in student outcomes would hopefully convince governments to invest more money in the two-year schools, creating a cycle of improvement.
Dive Insight:
Community colleges are criticized for representing a lesser option in post-secondary education for high school graduates, but the funding system largely ensures that reputation remains in place. Community colleges operate with a predominantly adjunct teaching force, in part because of their funding reality.
Redesigning the way colleges function takes buy-in from these technically part-time workers, who traditionally have less investment in their workplaces. Bailey emphasizes, however, that institutions can’t get around adjunct buy-in when it comes to creating pathways and new courses. He calls out the City Colleges of Chicago and the Miami Dade College system for already implementing many of the book’s suggested reforms.