Edmund J. Gleazer's "The Community College: Values, Vision, and Vitality" is reviewed. Gleazer, who served as president of the American Association of Community and Junior Colleges, sees the community college's mission as encouraging and facilitating lifelong learning, with community as process and product. (MLW)

A key to the movement toward open access to higher education has been the growth of public community colleges, which are reexamining their priorities, resources, and missions. The need for "people's colleges" to reconcile their concern for quality with their commitment to open access is discussed. (MLW)

Discusses the relationship of scholarship to outreach in the college or university's engagement with community problems. Suggests use of four quality outreach dimensions: significance, attention to context, internal and external impact, and scholarship. Identifies tensions faculty involved in outreach may experience, such as maintaining clear,…

The role of the community college and how declining resources affect its mission toward the U.S. goal of equal opportunity are discussed. The transfer mission, occupational program, developmental/remedial program, and community education or adult education program are described. (MLW)

The role of the community colleges in career education, compensatory education, community education, and transfer education is discussed in terms of its development in the 1970s and its future in the 1980s. (JMF)

College presidents nominated students to receive the Robinson Student Humanitarian Achievement Award honoring their commitment to community service. The four winners, George Arnold Cuevas Antillon, Eileen Doyle, Diane Koucky, and Joseph O'Brien, are interviewed. (MLW)

Educational reform by Miami-Dade Community College is discussed by its president, Robert H. McCabe. In an action that is considered unusual for two-year schools, it has tightened controls on its curriculum, faculty, and students. A commitment to achieving higher levels of literacy is advocated. (MLW)

It is both the best of times and the worst of times for America's community colleges. In the 100 years since their creation, these colleges have spread across the United States to become the largest sector of higher education, representing nearly 1,200 regionally accredited institutions within commuting distance of over 90 percent of the…

Community is seen as a capacity for relatedness within individuals--relatedness not only to people but to events in history, to nature, to the world of ideas, and to things of the spirit. Objectivism, the dominant epistemology in higher education, is seen as anticommunal. (MLW)

Colleges' and universities' commitment to community service is largely lip service. Conditions that would encourage more than just the very committed do not exist on most campuses. Communities are not voids to be organized and filled by the more knowledgeable; they are well-developed, complex, and sophisticated organisms that demand to be…

Argues that American democracy is at a critical stage of development, with declining trust in government, citizens feeling displaced by a professional political class, derailed public interest, and policy that limits citizen deliberation and responsibility. Some instances of civic innovation, community organization, civic journalism, and efforts…

A distinction between the student movement and the counterculture is made. Many of the educational innovations endorsed by the student movement in the 1960s are seen as having survived while the sociopolitical experimentation promoted by the counterculture has failed. Examples of innovations are provided. (MLW)

Ideas from current economic theory are applied to the nation's attitudes toward higher education. Ideas about asymmetric market information, trust markets, nonprofit firms, and maximization on campus are discussed. Public relations problems concerning accounting, deficits, and interest arbitrage are identified. The need for increased efficiency…

Undergraduate education must provide an opportunity for students to participate in research and teaching. Recommendations include: assessing student performance by teaching, research, public service, and institutional service; student conducted research of value to others; encouraging students to teach; and developing greater student familiarity…

A review of George B. Vaughan's introductory article for the series "New Directions for Community Colleges" is presented, including summaries of critical works on community colleges and pieces by authors who reexamine their own criticisms. Observations of "outsiders" are seen as essential to community college leaders. (MLW)