Community Colleges

Scribe: A Journal of Writing Perspectives and Pedagogy in Two-Year Colleges is up and running! But we need your help.

We are looking for essays to be published in our first issue, coming out in December. If you are interested, please send your submissions to twoyeardigest@live.com.

Submission Guidelines

•Submissions should be 500 to 4,000 words in length.

•All pages should be double-spaced and in current MLA format.

•The review process is blind. Please submit a cover page with your submission that includes the title, date of submission, your name, school or organization, and contact information.

•Include a biography that is 100 words or fewer.

•Manuscripts submitted to the Journal must be original and unpublished work of the author(s) and must not be under consideration by other publications.

•It is the author’s responsibility to obtain any necessary written permission for use of copyrighted material contained within the article.

•Send submissions and questions to twoyeardigest@live.com. In the subject line, please put SUBMISSION. The deadline is Oct. 15, 2010.

Topics we are looking for include, but are not limited to, the following:
•Pedagogy
•Technology in the Classroom
•Students, including the needs of the new generation
•Revamping Programs and Courses, including creating an AFA program
•Tenure and Unions
•Challenges and Successes, including personal experiences
•Assignments and Activities
•Basic Writing vs. Academic Writing
•Applying Writing to Other Majors

Community College Spotlight talks about Project Win through which

Last year, a pilot program in partnership with Education Trust awarded nearly 600 associate degrees at nine institutions in three states. Almost 1,600 students were identified as potential degree recipients.

And there is more!

Many former students are surprised to learn that they’d met the degree requirements or come close. They weren’t keeping track — and neither were the colleges they attended.

New Mexico looks for near-graduates of four-year universities to help them complete their final credits and earn a degree, reports College Puzzle.

Good news and a reasonable idea.

The Teacher’s Edge has a discussion, by Maureen Dolan, on what community colleges are doing to cut costs. This impacts access, obviously.

Chicago’s community college system is considering putting an end to offering remedial courses, a move that would limit community college accessibility for prospective students whose reading, writing or math skills show they aren’t prepared for college-level work.

Education Week magazine reported last week that Chicago Mayor Richard Daley cited the high cost of remedial programs as a reason to cut them. Daley suggested the money spent on remedial courses might be better spent at alternative high schools to get students’ skills up to college-level.

Of course, you cut classes, you are also cutting the work of the college. The same article talks of North Idaho College’s remedial courses and says these classes “represent 9 percent of the total credits received by students at the college.”

Yes, remedial courses cost money. Yes, it is important to save money. But if the students, particularly returning students, can’t take the class at a college, will they take it anywhere?

Community College Spotlight discusses Florida’s CCs giving BAs out.

The article on Inside Higher Ed begins:

When the first community colleges sought permission to offer four-year degrees, they generally said that it would only be one or two programs — nothing dramatic. But in Florida, where the community college baccalaureate movement is strongest, community colleges now offer more than 100 four-year degrees, and the figure could be about to jump significantly.

Though a handful of Florida community colleges had won approval to offer select four-year degrees around 2001, the rest of the state took hold of the idea in 2008…

One sentence in the commentary at CC Spotlight was eye-catching in a not-great way.

Community colleges’ four-year degree programs are attracting older students and minority students, making them less of a threat to four-year institutions.

“[T]hem” here is clearly intended to mean the degree programs. However, since the referent comes after older and minority students, it seems to be those that the four-year school won’t have to deal with.

And, honestly, do you want only 18 year olds who are white or Asian (who are minorities but do not count as minorities for schools because they go to college in such high numbers–which is probably another argument for culture rather than race) to be in a freshman class?

By putting forth the idea that minorities and older students go to CCs we are saying non-minorities and younger students go to 4-yr colleges. Is this what we want? An academic divide?

Teachers at CCs already get less respect in academia than teachers at 4-yr schools. Students taking classes at CCs are already seen as less prepared.

Do we really want to add that stigma to most of our minorities and older students?

It’s something that is worth thinking about. And doing something about.

Working-Class Perspectives has an interesting post on community colleges.

Julie Garza-Withers is wondering whether the community college is the right place for working-class students.

The research around student success suggests that community colleges do not challenge students and have low expectations. In the status hierarchy of higher ed, this means community college classes are perceived as “easier,” or less academically rigorous. Moreover, research shows that students who transfer from community colleges have frighteningly low graduation rates from four-year schools — an average of just 36% complete a four-year degree within 6 years. The analysis implies that the low graduation rate might be because community colleges do not foster cultures of achievement and that students do not feel motivated to succeed.

Having said that, however, she goes on to make some interesting and credible arguments for CCs being the right place for working-class students.

Her points include different levels of rigor, which allows for “catching up,” teaching over scholarship, which explains the lack of respect CC teachers have in the eyes of academe, and the cost of CCs.

It’s an interesting and thoughtful article and well worth reading.

First, before I begin, I will say that had I not received a full-time offer this year, I would not have paid much attention to Community College Dean’s discussion of what it means to be a professor with an overload. Does it impact adjuncts? Should we care? Does it impact the full-timer’s work? These are some of the questions CCDean asks.

The reason I now find it relevant is that I will be teaching an overload this fall. It is not by choice. My four-hour classes only count as 3.75 and my options are to take an underload, which will not be possible because the alternative assignments are all already taken, or an overload.

Truthfully, I don’t want an overload. I’m new at the school and I’ll be learning at least as much as most freshmen students, though hopefully not the same things! I really am expecting to be too busy to teach an overload. But since I have to teach it, I guess some of that learning will be put off.

I also don’t want an overload because they are going to pay me for it as an adjunct. So my extra work will earn me an additional $1000. Not cool. I’d almost rather they took the $1000 from my annual pay and let me teach an underload. But that’s not an option.

This is the framework from which I came to CCDean’s discussion. His discussion isn’t really on that topic, per se. But it is an interesting tangential point.

Folks who teach overloads also tend to be less available for committee meetings, since they’re more likely to be in class at any given time. Others have to do more unpaid labor so they have time to do more paid labor. It doesn’t smell right, and it somewhat discredits the idea that full-timers should be paid more because of their college service. If they aren’t available to do that college service, what, exactly, are we paying for?

I think THAT is CCDean’s most significant point.

What are we paying ft’ers for?
1. Years of service. That explains one set of “steps” in the promotion and pay ranks.
2. Degrees. That explains the other set of “steps.”
3. Tenure. I don’t mean that in the academic sense, but in the real world sense. We are paying our ft’ers to be around for the long haul.
4. Committee service. I think that’s a low ranking point. See the academic tenure rules for clear proof of that.
5. Name recognition. As an ft’er I am supposed to get my college’s name “out there.” I am supposed to publish and present and let people see that the ft faculty at MyCC is active, professional, and amazing.

That’s what I think they are paying for.

Name Recognition
Having been an adjunct who gave three different colleges Name Recognition on 19 publications and 29 presentations, I think that while Name Recognition is important, it is not limited to ft faculty. In fact, I think it is sometimes, at least in CCs, limited to adjunct faculty.

At CC1, the home of my longest tenure (length) as an adjunct, I sent the CFP for the state English conference to all the tt professors. No tt profs applied, only adjuncts did.

So I am not sure that, in the CCs at least, name recognition is usually that important.

HOWEVER, I also know that I lost my bid for a ft position at MyCC last year because I didn’t have as many publications as another candidate.

So, at least in this financial climate, it is important to the adjuncts who want to get tt jobs.

Years served
At least in my systems (four), no one was paid extra for having been a long-time adjunct. I know that some systems do, but I think these are rare. So we pay twenty-year veterans and newbies out of their grad classes the same amount.

We OUGHT to pay them based on seniority, but then we’d have to pay them more. Most of the point of adjuncts is to help the administration balance a precarious budget.

Degrees
Also in my systems, there was no additional pay for advanced degrees. (See discussion above.)

Tenure
This is what I think is the most important reason to pay ft’ers.

We pay ft’ers so that the courses we need taught and want taught will be taught. I dropped three schools and five courses last week, when I got the offer from my college. Five classes, including four hard-to-staff classes, will go begging. They’ll find someone, I am sure. But it won’t be someone who is qualified to do the work. Or at least it won’t be as qualified as I am.

That’s not bragging. That’s truth. I taught those courses BECAUSE they are hard to staff. I have the skills and it’s why I had the classes.

Ft’ers rarely leave a position two weeks before classes start. They don’t do that because they have ft pay.

Yes, we pay adjuncts squat so that we can keep the bills of the college down. I know that. But we pay the ft’ers a living wage so that we can keep the dropped courses down.

Committee Service
CCDean seemed to think this was the most important thing that differentiated ft’ers from adjuncts. I have never seen a CC where this mattered though. No one got ranks, promotions, tenure, or raises based on committee service.

You reward what you value.

Colleges do not reward committee service.

Is it any wonder that ft’ers are willing to do something to get out of a null advantage?

The Washington Post said:

Community colleges in the Washington region are doing brisk business this summer with students from four-year universities. The students are taking advantage of increasingly flexible transfer policies to load up on cheap, convenient credits that will help them graduate more quickly and at a lower expense.

This has always been true at my local CC. But it was students coming back to take “easier” versions of their required classes at the four-year colleges. The phenomenon has always made my Brit Lit I miniterm courses the highest averaged of my classes.

I think it is a good idea, but it can have it’s drawbacks.

My eldest son will graduate with a degree from University of Texas at Austin in 2012. He earned 74 credits (all his general ed requirements+) at a community college while he was still a high school student. He has a 3.85 on those credits. But on his UT majors courses, his average is a B-. And that hurts, because UT moved to a different scale and his GPA at UT only is 2.67. Ouch. Big difference there.

What does it mean? Does it mean the CC classes were too easy? I don’t think that is necessarily so. I know his English classes were difficult. But what it does mean is that he didn’t take any of the easier classes at UT so he won’t be able to have those in his UT GPA. It’s an issue.

I’m going to recommend he put his GPA in as either a weighted mix of the two groups or as a B, instead of as a 2.67. (Which, by the way, I think is atrocious. And an A+ gets the same weight as an A. Why should anyone work for excellence when it will not be rewarded?)

Wake Technical College in Raleigh, NC (near my old stomping grounds) is moving to afternoon class schedules, according to The Chronicle.

Students who sign up will take four classes every day, Monday through Thursday, between 2 and 6:20 p.m. They will have no classes on Friday. The Northern Wake campus was selected for the pilot program because its students tend to be younger than those at Wake Tech’s other four campuses.

My new job means that, among other things, I have a reason to attend the TYCA SW conference this year.

So… August 15th is the deadline for presenting.

Laredo Community College invites you to the 45th TYCA –SW Conference in Laredo, TX on October 21- 23, 2010 at the historic La Posada Hotel. We welcome individual presentations, small group panel discussions, and workshops focusing on our conference theme “Connecting the Dots”. Today, we work with the most expressive and tech savvy generation of students in our rapidly changing world. Though some are not fully prepared, most of the students are optimistic, empathetic, world aware, and hopeful of the future. With our advanced technology of e-mail, Twitter, blogs, and Facebook, these “Billionnials” are communicating every second. We seem to live in a world where anything seems to go. How do we connect the dots to align traditional writing and literature with their world? How do we make them connect the dots? As instructors, are we on a collision course or harmonizing? How do we inspire our students to become careful readers, critical thinkers, and thoughtful writers? How do we help them connect the dots between literature and composition, college, career, and future endeavors?

I’m looking forward to going.