Confessions of a Community College Dean

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.

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?"

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.

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.

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.

In response to yesterday’s post about the seeming invisibility of the social sciences, a commenter asked me why, if I value the social sciences so highly, I strongly advise against people getting Ph.D.’s in them. Shortly after that, I saw Michael Berube’s essay about graduate admissions, in which he kinda, sorta suggested that they should be cut back, but not unless the departments are willing, and it’s complicated, and anyway aren’t we all “awesome.”

STEM initiatives are all the rage in academia these days. They’re popular with policymakers, who see them as a form of high-end workforce development; they’re popular with parents, who see them as high-end job placement; and they’re somewhat popular with students. At the community college level, developmental math has long been -- and continues to be -- a major challenge for graduation rates; it continues, rightly, to receive substantial attention.

From the “other duties as assigned” file: yesterday I had to go in for a medical procedure. In the course of making small talk with the tech, she mentioned that her daughter is looking at colleges, but they’re both worried about student loans. I mentioned where I work, and for the next half hour, the conversation was all about transfer, comparative tuition levels, student loans, and the difficulty for new grads who can’t find jobs but have huge loans to pay off. All of this during the procedure.