Education, Democracy and Second Chances The Role of Community Colleges in University Preparation Abstract: All community college students applying for admission to state universities should be required to take the ACT (or SAT) and be subjected to entrance standards equivalent to those demanded of high school students. America is the land of second chances. People from every country, from all walks of life, come here seeking opportunities unavailable to them elsewhere. Many of us descended from such immigrants. This history is reflected in our system of higher education. In many countries if a young person fails to meet the entrance requirements for university studies the game is over. He or she may apply for vocational training or seek employment, but there is typically no second chance for a higher education. In the United States students who, for whatever reason, have performed poorly in high school can still hope to get a university education. They can do so by attending low cost, open admissions, community colleges. These institutions provide a stepping stone for slower students to either pursue vocational training or university preparation. (Of course, some good students opt for a vocational program.) This is fair since some who fail to meet university standards do have academic potential. Young people face many hardships beyond their control: family problems, economic problems, racial discrimination, geographic isolation, poorly funded or mismanaged schools, to name a few. The community college system also implicitly recognizes that young people mature at different rates; we are not all ready to leave home at 18. And this system allows for older workers to try for higher education. Our system of community colleges, a uniquely American innovation, is one of the great strengths of what is undoubtedly the world's most democratic system of higher education. However, democracy and education are strange bed-fellows. If students got to vote on their grades, "A" would win every time. Just as democratic governments have had to set up checks and balances to resist populist pressures to print money, an educational system needs mechanisms to prevent grade and degree inflation. Public school teachers have tenure rights so that they may judge students' work objectively. Otherwise, pressure from parents, coaches and even school boards, would quickly democratize the grades. Universities require standardized tests for admission, imperfect though they are, to insure some degree of objectivity in comparing students from different high schools. But there is gap in the system. Most state universities in Illinois do not require community college transfer students to take an admissions test. Further, our community colleges have been so under funded that most of the instructors, 72% [*], are part-timers without tenure. Their continued employment is often based on student evaluations. It is not simply that many community college transfer students do poorly in their university studies. Since the state feels that colleges should compete with each other like private businesses, universities find themselves pressured to lower standards to attract and retain students. University students, imagining themselves mere consumers, will shop around, often taking some college level courses at a community college. But instead of seeking the most knowledge for their dollar, they all too often seek to expend the least amount of work for their grade! This has locked universities and community colleges into a mad race to the bottom. What to do? All community college students applying for admission to state universities should be required to take the ACT (or SAT) and be subjected to entrance standards equivalent to those demanded of high school students. Only then we will know if the remediation efforts have been successful. Ideally, those students who have taken college level courses at community colleges should have to pass the corresponding AP exam, if one exists. Some community college administrators may object. No one likes to be checked up on. But such accountability may embolden those among their faculty who wish to dictate higher standards. But it is difficult for any one university to make such a change to its transfer policy; it would lose students, and hence funding, to competing campuses. Pressure from pundits and state politicians may be enough to effect this reform, or legislation may be required. The latter should be a last resort since laws can have unintended consequences. However, standardized tests are no magic bullet. The public schools have gone overboard in this direction. Excessive testing can distort the curriculum. Teachers have been pressured to teach only to the test. Music, drama, art, even science labs and mathematics proofs may be neglected. Yet, at the community college level there is no accountability. In the long run we need to fund community colleges (and universities) so that they no longer rely on non-tenure track faculty. No parent would tolerate it if their child's high school had half of its courses taught by part-timers. But this reform will be costly. Taxpayer resistance is to be expected. It is likely that only the unionization of the community college faculty will generate the political muscle needed to secure the necessary state funds. In the meantime testing prospective transfer students is a necessary, if stopgap, measure. (Since writing this I have learned that our local community college has a faculty union. The union gets raises for its members and then the administration fails to hire for tenure track positions, switching them to temporary positions. The union at SIUC is trying to stop this practice on our campus. --Nov. 2000) The role of higher education needs to be understood. While popular culture has never placed much value on thought and knowledge, in today's "age of entertainment" the struggle is both broader and sharper. More people than ever are pursuing a college education and yet the distractions are ever more pervasive. Education should serve as a counterweight to the meretriciousness of modern culture. In addition to imparting knowledge and fostering reason education seeks to cultivate curiosity and imagination, and to develop taste and temperament. Students, business leaders and politicians often confuse higher education with vocational training. Only students driven by their own curiosity, tempered by ethics, powered by reason and imagination, will become life long learners. All the reforms imaginable will be to no avail if this point is lost. Shopping for short cuts will not do. Let's not blow our second chance. --------- * James C. Palmer, Illinois State University, "Part-Time Faculty At Community Colleges: A National Profile," The NEA 1999 Almanac of Higher Education, pp 45-53. See Table 2. Michael C. Sullivan Associate Professor Mathematics Department Southern Illinois University Carbondale IL 62901-4408 msulliva @ math.siu.edu Copyright, August 2000. This essay may be freely distributed electronically or photo copied for educational purposes. Other forms of publication require the written consent of the author. PS: If you were going to read two books on higher education I would suggest these: (1) The University Today, by Stuart Palmer, University Press of America, 1998; and (2) Generation X goes to College, by Peter Sacks, Open Court Publishing, 1996.