This chapter provides individual and institutional strategies for confronting the historical challenges facing community college faculty, especially the prestige model, mission ambiguity, and declining resources.

Nearly 70 percent of American students enroll in postsecondary education immediately after graduating high school. Yet college and university completion rates remain highly disparate across social and economic groups. White students in the US are 20 percent more likely than Black and Latino students to graduate, and students from high-income…

Regional Technical Colleges, later Institutes of Technology, were developed just over fifty years ago in response to a perceived gap in knowledge, skills, and competencies required to promote market growth and success (Thorn, 2018). It was envisaged that this change to Ireland's higher education landscape would be capable of continuing adaptation…

Now more than ever, leading community colleges is a complicated and challenging endeavor. According to the American Council on Education's (ACE) American College President Study of 2017, 33.9% of community college presidents planned to retire from their positions within three to five years. Consequently, this gap in community college leadership…

In this OCCRL Community College Context feature brief, Dr. Francena F.L. Turner calls attention to the need for additional historical study of community college educators, particularly Black women who teach at these institutions.

This article examines the alienated labor of ALP writing instructors, who are being held accountable for a community college completion agenda that might not be best serving students. Discussing some of the larger historical forces and local institutional contexts impacting ALP teachers at CUNY, and drawing on recent studies of CUNY faculty, it…

Northern Virginia Community College (NOVA), like other community colleges, does not require Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) scores or similar entrance examinations for admission. However, new college applicants must demonstrate their levels of reading, writing, and mathematics skills to determine whether they need developmental courses to prepare…

"The Teaching Archive" shows us a series of major literary thinkers in a place we seldom remember them inhabiting: the classroom. Rachel Sagner Buurma and Laura Heffernan open up "the teaching archive"--the syllabuses, course descriptions, lecture notes, and class assignments--of critics and scholars including T. S. Eliot,…

Food Stamp work requirements for college students date back to the 1960s and '70s when public perception fueled the belief that students from middle- and upper-income families, who should support them, were taking advantage of government. This was coupled with a belief that students had made themselves "voluntarily idle" by removing…

Community college bachelor's (CCB) programs have only existed for a few decades, yet now reach 25 states. Since 1989, both state policies allowing these programs and the number of CCB programs itself has grown steadily. A body of research on CCBs is growing in the wake of changing state policy and the growth of new programs. This literature review…

This paper focuses on the colleges and institutes of higher education (CIHEs), major providers of HE, almost sixty of which existed in England and Wales between the 1970s and the early twenty-first century. Its central argument is that a failure to develop the CIHEs as specialist institutions of advanced professional learning along the lines of…

The theme course has not held a distinct place in scholarship, despite being a longstanding practice in the field; meanwhile, it has come under scrutiny in teaching for transfer (TFT) scholarship, which perceives the practice as conflicting with writing-centered approaches. In contrast, scholarship on theme courses suggests that a resilient motive…

This is the first comprehensive and contemporary history of the largest and most diverse public system of higher education in the United States. Serving over 2 million students annually--approximately one-quarter of the nation's community college undergraduates--California's 116 community colleges play an indispensable role in career and transfer…

This article compares state expenditure data to see how the operating budgets of public community colleges specifically, and public higher education institutions generally, have fared over the past 30 years. Data from the National Association of State Budget Officers (NASBO) have long tracked major state expenditure categories, including the…

Little research exists on the specific ways that Indigenous Knowledge is integrated into institutions of higher education across the U.S.-affiliated islands of Micronesia. This research study highlights the existence of Palauan Knowledge within Palau Community College. An Indigenous paradigm (Wilson, 2003) is utilized to align with Palauan values…