Confessions of a Community College Dean

Greetings from Dallas, where the theme of the first day of the League for Innovation conference seemed to be “how to deal with actual human behavior.”

By Matt Reed

Bruce Leslie, the Chancellor of Alamo Colleges, has a provocative piece on the Huffington Post in which he foretells the end of community colleges. While it’s easy to argue with this particular or that one, the point that resonates is that we need to move beyond the “mini-university” model.

By Matt Reed

Kevin Carey’s latest, a long piece on financial aid as an enabler of fiscal irresponsibility in elite higher education, is well worth the read. But for everything in it, I’ve been stewing on a single paragraph for the last few days.

By Matt Reed

Back in my faculty days at DeVry, during the Clinton years, students would ask me on a regular basis why they had to take “general education” courses, like mine. They would have preferred to do nothing other than their technical classes, and they weren’t shy about saying so. I told them that their technical skills would get them their first job, but that their analytical and communication skills would get them promoted. If they only ever wanted to work at the help desk, they didn’t need my class. But if they ever wanted to manage the people at the help desk, the stuff I helped them develop would be crucial.

By Matt Reed

A longtime reader writes: "If I start a career in the admin side of higher education, am I heading toward a new ceiling I don't yet see? And what kind of job should I look to start in if I want to be able to grow into positions of greater responsibility as I develop greater skills?"

By Matt Reed

Life happens when it happens, but I picked a hell of a week to take a blogging break. The University of Phoenix has been informed that it’s likely to be put on probation by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association, its regional accreditor.

By Matt Reed

Oscar Wilde supposedly once claimed that he would have been a socialist, but he liked to keep his evenings free. All that civic participation would have crimped his style. I was reminded of that this week in discussion with some faculty who were balking at the time commitment involved in serving on search committees. They all believe in heavy faculty involvement in searches, but all that participation really adds up.

By Matt Reed

I like this story a lot, even though it’s a little pessimistic. Apparently, Klamath Community College, in Oregon, has decided to make a series of changes to improve student success rates. Some of the changes are relatively straightforward, such as requiring academic advising and new student orientation. But it has gone farther than that, and eliminated late registration.

By Matt Reed