As the Most Promising Places to Work in
Community Colleges project evolves, we learn more and more about what's going on at various institutions to increase faculty and staff diversity, to foster staff sense of belonging and to equip college student educators for their work with students.
Stressing the importance of being responsive to the changing needs of
community colleges, which in turn respond to the changing needs of their locales, Young recommended that
community college leadership programs remain sensitive to the development of the
community college system (1996).
The review was prompted by the State of Illinois' (Baa1 negative) continued budget stalemate and its effect on
community college districts' revenues.
Somewhere along the way,
community colleges began to be viewed with a very jaundiced eye, bearing the stigma of being considered inferior schools, developed for people who couldn't get into four-year institutions.
Department of Education to create the first-ever list of America's best
community colleges. This year, we have updated the list with all-new CCSSE data (see "A Note on Methodology," page 51), ranking more than 650
community colleges nationwide in order to identify the fifty best
community colleges of 2010.
And yet, despite these extremely large numbers, many leaders and faculty members at four-year colleges and universities and many secondary school counselors engage in a subtle put-down of
community colleges. A patronizing attitude is all too common in the view that these institutions are fine for less talented or less well-off individuals, who deserve some educational opportunity even if it is "just" at a
community college.
Comprehensive
community colleges are well-poised to move on these themes and are doing this work in the context of national and global challenges raised by the commission.
Because of their locations,
community colleges have an advantage in attracting these students.
Terry O'Banion, president emeritus of the League for Innovation in the
Community College, puts it this way: "A learning revolution is spreading rapidly through all sectors of education, and the
community college has become the most visible crucible in which the concepts and practices of this revolution are being forged."
Paul McCarthy, president of Prairie State, notes that
community colleges have also had funding hits in the past few years, and that impedes their ability to serve this population.
This one library facility would serve as the central library for two agencies: the City of Westminster, Colorado, a suburban city of 100,000 located ten miles from Denver, Colorado; and the Westminster campus of Front Range
Community College (FRCC), the largest campus of the largest
community college in Colorado.
Community colleges depend primarily on states for their funding, but states get part of their funds from the federal government.