Confessions of a Community College Dean

Yesterday I received two emails in rapid succession that fairly begged for a single response. One of them seemed quite confident in asserting that developmental education is a cash cow for community colleges. The other seemed equally confident that developmental education is a money drain for community colleges.

Did you know that community colleges don’t just send transfer students; they also receive them? It’s true. But the entire policy world doesn’t seem to know that.

Some ideas from the business world translate to academia better than others. At my college, we’re running an experiment with...

A new correspondent writes: "I'm willing to do just about anything to prepare myself for the job market in May, but I'm really getting discouraged. I want to be able to make a decent living (I'm talking $45K as the dream salary, here) while teaching theatre. How do I go about making myself an attractive candidate, even without a PhD under my belt?"

A new correspondent writes: "I just want to know how to get a job as a CC professor and keep it."

The Boy had basketball camp last week, and The Girl had “zoo camp” at a local zoo. Both were day camps, so whatever they did during the day, they were home at night. This week, they’ve been partly absent.

I’m just old enough to remember when evening classes were the hotbed of enrollment growth.

Someone at work sends you an email that you aren’t quite sure how to interpret. Maybe the phrasing is ambiguous, maybe it uses a term with different meanings, or maybe there just isn’t enough context to decide what’s being said. It seems weirdly hostile, but you don’t know why there would be hostility. What do you do?