Wed Apr 11, 2012, 10:18 AM

bemildred (67,478 posts)

Community colleges' learning disability

AEI. Mostly so I can point out how this silly shit equates education with the efficient production of AA degrees, i.e. the efficient production of a pre-determined "product" rather than providing of a service to autonomous citizens because they are entitled to the means to an education to use as THEY see fit. In other words, he assumes the conclusion he purports to prove.

Community colleges are central to the nation's higher education system, enrolling almost 30% of all postsecondary students. But their record of success is spotty.

Nationally, only about a quarter of full-time community college students complete their studies within three years (the official measure of a school's graduation rate).

At more than a third of California's community colleges, graduation rates are 20% or less. Of the full-time, degree-seeking students who entered California community colleges in 2007, more than 35,000 had not earned their degrees three years later, and most of them were no longer enrolled in any postsecondary institution.

This happens year after year after year, and it's not only the dropouts who are harmed. When students fail to complete their degrees, taxpayers also lose.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-schneider-community-college-graduation-rates-20120411,0,2732111.story

11 replies, 1030 views

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11 replies	Author	Time	Post
Community colleges' learning disability (Original post)	bemildred	Apr 2012	OP
First they came after the teachers	Frances	Apr 2012	#1
I have done a great deal of recreational education,	bemildred	Apr 2012	#2
Same here	mactime	Apr 2012	#3
i started at my community college in 1968	madrchsod	Apr 2012	#4
I teach community college and a lot of students work, have families to support, and...	yurbud	Apr 2012	#5
I feel so lucky that my community college was in its heyday	EFerrari	Apr 2012	#8
Did you notice who wrote this?	Mosby	Apr 2012	#6
Good catch. Anything from "American Enterprise Institute" is instantly suspect.	madinmaryland	Apr 2012	#7
"AEI". First word. nt	bemildred	Apr 2012	#9
lol, I totally skipped over the italicized part	Mosby	Apr 2012	#10
It is nothing.	bemildred	Apr 2012	#11

Response to bemildred (Original post)

Wed Apr 11, 2012, 10:34 AM

Frances (7,804 posts)

1. First they came after the teachers

Now they are coming after institutions that offer affordable need-to-know classes

Note: When I signed up for classes at a community college, I was not planning to get a degree. I just wanted the information that the particular classes I took provided

The Koch brothers and others are doing everything they can to keep poor people from getting educated

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Response to Frances (Reply #1)

Wed Apr 11, 2012, 10:40 AM

bemildred (67,478 posts)

2. I have done a great deal of recreational education,

and a lot where I wanted to learn more about some subject, and sometimes to get degrees. The notion that any of those uses of the public education system is "failure" pisses me off.

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Response to Frances (Reply #1)

Wed Apr 11, 2012, 10:42 AM

mactime (202 posts)

3. Same here

Signed up for some classed that interested me first and then decided to go ahead and knock out a degree. It took me a while too, since I was only able to fit in 1 or 2 classes per semester

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Response to bemildred (Original post)

Wed Apr 11, 2012, 12:13 PM

madrchsod (55,708 posts)

4. i started at my community college in 1968

i went back in the early 80`s and now since it`s free i`m going back next fall. i`ve attempted around 125 credit hours and i`n still 12 hours short of my two year degree.

count me as one of those who cost the tax payers !

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Response to bemildred (Original post)

Wed Apr 11, 2012, 03:17 PM

yurbud (31,395 posts)

5. I teach community college and a lot of students work, have families to support, and...

have to deal with every dwindling class offerings, which makes finishing at all a tough prospect, let alone finishing in a traditional two year period.

This stinks of what conservatives have done to K-12 education: they shot holes in the boat, then pointed out that it was sinking, and therefore needed to be shot with a bigger cannon.

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Response to yurbud (Reply #5)

Wed Apr 11, 2012, 05:32 PM

EFerrari (163,986 posts)

8. I feel so lucky that my community college was in its heyday

when I went there. The teachers were outstanding and there were good counselors, too, to help me prepare to transfer which was crucial because no one in my family had done it and we were all clueless. It couldn't have gone more smoothly. I had to take some courses at night which was hard on the family but for the most part, it was a great experience. Never once were the odds against me finishing school put in my face.

It was a lively place, not like City College in San Francisco, for example, that is depressing to walk through or was, last time I was there.

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Response to bemildred (Original post)

Wed Apr 11, 2012, 03:46 PM

Mosby (2,921 posts)

6. Did you notice who wrote this?

Mark Schneider is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and vice president at the American Institutes for Research. Lu Michelle Yin is an economist and a researcher at the American Institutes for Research.

His suggestion for "fixing" the CC system:

Finally, for-profit institutions embody a host of ideas that community colleges should emulate. Despite being the subject of negative scrutiny over the last year or so, many for-profit colleges are leading the way in developing innovative online learning platforms and redefining an approach to curriculum development and faculty training to encourage uniformity in instruction across multiple sites and instructors. Faculty at the best for-profit institutions are evaluated on the basis of their students' learning outcomes, and promotion and salary decisions are based in part on these metrics. Graduation rates at two-year for-profit institutions are almost three times higher than at public community colleges.

Reforms such as these could transform today's inefficient and costly community college system. These reforms are not necessarily expensive, especially in relation to the tax dollars lost each year through lower income and lower tax collections, as well as the billions of dollars in government appropriations that subsidize the tuition paid by students who fail to graduate.

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Response to Mosby (Reply #6)

Wed Apr 11, 2012, 05:03 PM

madinmaryland (52,892 posts)