The California Community Colleges (CCC) is the largest system of higher education in the United States. In the past two decades, CCC has effectively shut hundreds of thousands of students out of higher education by increasing the cost of tuition. The drop in student enrollment resulted in fewer students meeting their educational goals within a…

The Arizona Advanced Manufacturing Institute (AzAMI) is still a year away from the end of the U.S. Department of Labor grant that expanded the program, but already, AzAMI Executive Director Leah Palmer at Mesa Community College (MCC) in Mesa, Arizona, is fielding calls from companies that have hired her students through the institute. As state…

Cutting programs and laying off staff is one of the hardest parts of a community college president's job. Not only is it emotional for everyone involved, but the political fallout can be damaging as well. How campus leaders arrive at the difficult choice to cut staff and programs, and how they communicate their decision to stakeholders, can make a…

The California Community College mission requires offering relevant Career and Technical Education (CTE) programs. Due to program accretion and bureaucratic inertia, program discontinuance (PD) seems at odds with postsecondary culture. Yet, as a result of recent budget constrictions, community colleges are forced to identify effective PD…

In the author's fifteen years as a subscriber to "TETYC," he has yet to read an article as alarming as Keith Kroll's "The End of the Community College English Profession." His argument that neoliberalism--a political ideology and set of economic policies that look to the free market and privatization for answers to questions great and small--is…

The 1998 Academic Senate for California Community Colleges paper Program Discontinuance: A Faculty Perspective presented issues of program discontinuance and addressed principles and key factors for effective faculty participation in the development of fair and equitable program discontinuance processes. In 2009, an Academic Senate resolution…

Across the U.S., colleges like Anne Arundel Community College (Maryland) are devising strategies and designing curricula to meet the demands created by the substantial troop shifts. They are adding degree and certificate programs and refashioning or expanding others, in areas as diverse as network security, procurement and contracting, and…

Collegiate athletic programs have often been referred to as the "front porch" of an institution. Coaches, athletic teams, student athletes, and athletic department staff serve as a "link between the immediate campus family and the larger community. It is this front-porch principle that makes managing intercollegiate athletics a unique and…

The impact of an experimental, one-semester suspension of mathematics and English prerequisites from 12 courses is investigated. Data on enrollment, student performance, and instructor opinions are analyzed for the total group, and results concerning English versus mathematics prerequisites are compared. Implications for further research on the…

The Rostrum is a quarterly publication of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) The Need for full Time faculty (again) by Jane Patton; (2) Reading May Be the Key to Unlocking Basic Skills Success by Janet Fulks; (3) Diversity Institute on the Right Track by Beth Smith; (4)…

The Center for College Affordability and Productivity (CCAP) is an independent, nonprofit research center based in Washington, DC that is dedicated to researching public policy and economic issues relating to postsecondary education. CCAP aims to facilitate a broader dialogue that challenges conventional thinking about costs, efficiency and…

Almost everyone agrees that colleges have become costly to attend and are a growing burden on society to finance. Rising tuition costs threaten the ability and desire of students to attend college. Are there things that can be done to significantly reduce the cost of college? The answer is an emphatic "yes." The Center for College Affordability…

This fifth edition of the Maryland Community Colleges Instructional Program Manual was designed to be used in the development, submission, review, and approval of all new instructional programs in the Maryland community colleges. The first section provides a timetable for program proposals and program evaluations. The next sections contain…

This report provides information on the guiding principles and requirements for academic program development in the Connecticut Community-Technical Colleges. Any program development needs to be tied to the system mission. The origins of program development should continue to build on the strength of local college initiatives where perceived…

In fiscal year 1984, the Illinois Community College Board initiated a statewide program review and evaluation process, through which each of the Illinois public community colleges has implemented a review process to evaluate both instructional programs and student/academic support services. Each college designed a program review process to serve…