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Summary: Critical Issues Facing Community Colleges

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Summary: Critical Issues Facing Community Colleges
Top Two
Critical Issues
Facing Community Colleges
Remediation
This topic came up repeatedly as I was researching critical issues for higher education in the community college environment, the vo-tech training schools, and the four-year postsecondary schools. Grace Chen (2011) writes “Community college leaders have not yet formed a consensus on what it means for students to be "college ready," which could impact the quality of the education received”. This is a problem is because the receiving institutions make the entrance requirement and the core subjects (math, English, reading) in these various schools use various tests/standards for placement of students. Also, for the community college, there is no guarantee that adult students
…show more content…
According to the College Board (2011), “four-year institution leaders have been warned before about the need to enroll more transfers”. One reason is because during recessions and economic declines high school graduation rates tend to decline. This is a typical time for a community college to increase enrollment. “Despite considerable effort already generated…levels of transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions can be improved” (Pusser & Levin, 2009, Executive Summary, para. 9) .

References
Chen, Grace. June 2, 2011. What are the Biggest Issues Facing Community Colleges Today? New Study has Answers. http://www.communitycollegereview.com/articles/354
College Board. 2011. Improving Student Transfer from Community Colleges to Four-Year Institutions —The Perspective of Leaders from Baccalaureate-Granting Institution. http://advocacy.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/11b3193transpartweb110712.pdf
Complete College America. April 2012. Remediation-Higher Education’s Bridge to Nowhere. http://www.insidehighered.com/sites/default/server_files/files/CCA%20Remediation%20ES%20FINAL.pdf
Pusser, Brian and Levin, John. December 2009. Re-imagining Community Colleges in the 21st Century--A Student-Centered Approach to Higher Education.

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