Community Colleges in a Perfect

Community Colleges in a Perfect Storm details the pressures community colleges face today. These pressures include high student enrollment, state budget cuts, limited facilities, high faculty turnover and retirements, steep technology costs, and many students needing remedial work. Leaders of community colleges are having difficulty meeting increased demands with waning resources. These challenges are still proving difficult to face even though political leaders such as President Bush, former President Clinton, and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan have recognized and supported the role community colleges play in educating America's workforce.

Not Your Father's Community College" details the changes that community colleges have made in recent years. New programs such as dual-credit programs have improved the public's perception of community colleges. These recent changes have made community colleges more visible to the public and greatly improved public perception of community colleges. Community colleges continue to make changes in order to meet the needs of the community.

State Spending on Community Colleges is up, but so is Tuition, Survey Finds" discusses the results of a survey that focused on state spending on community colleges. Even though states increased their spending on community colleges, tuition rose by an average of seven percent. When it is time to make budget cuts in community colleges, workforce training and remedial education are the programs that suffer. Rural community colleges have the worst budget troubles, as they are unable to rely on the local property-tax base when states cut support.

Troubling Times for Community Colleges" discusses the various difficulties that community colleges face today. Those difficulties include financial challenges, increasing student enrollment, and retirements of administrators and faculty. It is also difficult for community colleges to ensure that students are receiving a quality education, but there are external pressures for better assessment programs. With all of the difficulties and demands community colleges are facing, hopefully higher education policy makers and state officials pay more attention to these important institutions.

Who Will Lead Our Community Colleges?" reports that an increase in growth and complexity of community colleges has resulted in leadership challenges. Meanwhile, the demands of effective leadership have increased as community colleges are feeling pressure from the government and other outside entities to become more accountable. The supply of leaders is small as effective training programs are almost nonexistent. Community colleges are in desperate need of leaders that are well-informed about the unique challenges that community colleges face.

No Need to Invent Them: Community Colleges and Their Place in the Education Landscape" explains that community colleges are a vital part of higher education. Community colleges maintain an extensive variety of programs such as certification programs, vocational training, degree programs, workforce development programs, adult basic education, GED programs, and remedial programs. All community college programs are implemented to fill a need in the local community. Indeed, community colleges have a very diverse and extremely important role to fill.

New Rural Community College Faculty Members and Job Satisfaction" reports that many community college faculty members have never had any experience in a community college and do not know what to expect in this new environment. Also, many are unprepared to complete tasks unique to community college such as teaching diverse students. Those faculty members in rural areas not only have to deal with those challenges, but also sometimes have difficulty adjusting to living and working in a rural area. Among those having difficulty, workload and students' abilities were cited as common disappointments in the work; however, most community college instructors have a high level of satisfaction in their jobs, which is usually caused by simply working with students.

How Community Colleges Understand the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning" discusses community colleges' focus on teaching as their primary goal, rather than research and scholarship, which is generally the main focus of universities. The American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) Carnegie Teaching Academy has suggested that community colleges focus on the scholarship of teaching and learning. Community colleges that change their focus from teaching as their primary goal to promoting the scholarship of teaching and learning are able to use inquiry and experimentation to improve teaching and learning.