[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Trends in the Community College
Surely educational institutions should be primarily concerned with teaching and learning. At least in our society, schools and colleges have little formal role in business to distract them from teaching, and their political roles are also marginal except on certain hot issues (like affirmative action). Extracurricular activities may be important, but no one thinks well of institutions that become party or football schools. Our educational institutions are relatively specialized; presumably they can concentrate on teaching and learning in ways that family, workplaces, and community and political institutions no longer can.
Sometimes, however, teaching and learning seem the last concerns of schools and colleges. The lofty rhetoric—the notion of educating all Americans to the limits of their ability, the faith in education as the engine of economic growth and personal advancement, the recurring belief in equality of educational opportunity—has real consequences, particularly in stimulating public funding, but it says almost nothing about what goes on in classrooms. Local school board elections and political jousting in state capitals and Washington, D.C., are far from classroom practices. The administrators who represent schools and colleges to the outside world often speak in platitudes and the language of boosterism; their political and managerial roles often swamp their roles as educational leaders. All too often debates about education become mired in conflicts over means —funding, political control, personnel policies, the allocation of space and equipment. The ends, the learning of students and its facilitation by instructors, are forgotten.
The absence of institutional mechanisms to enhance teaching is as prevalent in high schools, most four-year colleges, and research universities as it is in community colleges. The details of our analysis are specific to community colleges.Comprehensive community colleges specializing in occupational preparation have become important institutions.......
