Confessions of a Community College Dean

In my state, as in many, there’s a move afoot at the state level to impose greater “accountability” throughout public higher education, but especially on community colleges. (In the words of Spider-Man’s uncle, “with small appropriations come great responsibility.” No, wait...) A few legislators heard a few anecdotes, and bad ideas are starting to snowball.

I’ve been calling references for job candidates of late, and starting to wonder if there are better questions to ask.

Yesterday’s post about adjuncts on food stamps had as its subtext a sense that the current economic models for higher ed are unsustainable. To my mind, the right questions are not “how do we restore a Golden Age?” or “how do we create hundreds of thousands of new faculty positions without raising tuition?” Those simply aren’t going to happen. The right questions involve finding new economic models for higher education that could actually survive.

If you haven’t seen this article yet, go read it. I’d advise skipping some of the comments -- they’re about as enlightening as internet comments on polarizing issues tend to be – but the story itself is really disturbing. It’s about a study recently released showing tens of thousands of Ph.D.’s across the country, and hundreds of thousands of people with master’s degrees, who are on food stamps.

If you haven’t seen Paul Fain’s piece in IHE about credit for prior learning, check it out. It’s a great introduction to a topic that it ready to break big over the next couple of years.

A longtime correspondent writes: "Out here in California, cc's are facing a real budget crisis. At my campus, we're trying to cut $5 million out of this year's budget, and this year was not a good year."

“What is space expanding into?” -- The Boy

This is one of those “thinking out loud” posts, as opposed to some sort of fully thought out proposal. Constructive feedback is very, very welcome.