Confessions of a Community College Dean

I enjoyed this story. Apparently, Ozarks Technical Community College has decided to take out ads showing how its tuition levels stack up against its local for-profit competitors. The idea is to provide some much-needed counterpoint to the marketing barrage that for-profits routinely generate, and to warn students away from programs that might saddle them with heavy debt burdens and non-transferable credits.

I winced when I read about the Community College of Allegheny County telling its adjuncts that it would cap their hours in order to avoid penalties under the Affordable Care Act. The commentary over the next few days was predictable: conservatives saying “I told you so,” and everyone else saying that this is just another example of evil administrators running a college like a business.

Should community colleges in different parts of a state compete with each other for funding? To me, the obvious answer is “no,” but that doesn’t appear obvious to everybody.

A new correspondent writes: "I just recently passed the phone interview stage and I'm getting ready to prepare for an upcoming on-campus interview. The position is a full-time community college asst prof position, teaching online courses. The on-campus interview will require me to conduct a 10-minute presentation on content I've created for online courses. I was wondering if you might have any advice about this process?"

I get uneasy when I read calls for ‘transformative leaders.’ They strike me as taking far too much for granted.

As a kid, I loved the Roadrunner cartoons. They were kid-friendly versions of the Sisyphus myth, with lovable characters, preposterous gadgetry, and an endearing disregard for the laws of physics. (To this day, I can’t see the word “Acme” without picturing Wile E. Coyote crashing into the side of a canyon.) I always laughed when the coyote found himself suspended in mid-air, looked down, looked at the camera, and then fell; the suggestion was that gravity only kicked in once you noticed it.

This is one of those “laugh or cry” articles. The Wisconsin Technical College system is looking for a new chancellor. Apparently, enrollments have grown forty percent since 2004, to the point that the system now has a 12,000 student waiting list. But state funding for the system dropped 30 percent in a single year.

I got asked a great question yesterday: if you could just send one message to the public, what would it be?