Questions Confronting Community Colleges

Written by
Mike Robinson

The landscape in higher education has transformed and from its conversion a highly competitive and innovative environment is forging. In this new environment, public community colleges are facing a myriad of social and economic factors that for many impeded their ongoing mission to provide comprehensive educational opportunities to their community. The need, expectation, and capability of postsecondary education to provide a product of quality, accessibility and affordability is anticipated to grow dramatically over the next decade.

The demands for higher education are greater than ever before among the citizenry and as a result the pursuit of postsecondary education is no longer institutionally driven, but is now both economically and market driven, primarily as a result of increase global competition impacting the economies of all nations (Pusser, Breneman, Gansneder, Kohl, Levin, Milam, & Turner, 2007). The question confronting community college leaders today is can they compete effectively in the heavily competitive market of higher education? And if so, what strategies have they implemented to increase and sustain their position as a provider of quality postsecondary education?

Levin (2001) suggested community colleges are impacted by the affects of globalization in the domains of economic, cultural and technological areas. He believes the most significant of the three domains as it relates to the landscape of community colleges is the economic domain. In this area community colleges face risk of allocation reductions and increase regulations or policy initiates whenever the economic stability of their state is threaten by global forces. Bailey (2002) identified seven factors challenging the role of community colleges and their ability to provide services to a demanding population of learners need for higher education in the 21 century. Two of those factors identified by Bailey were globalization and the growth and for-profit institutions. Globalization is the involvement of a growing worldwide interdependence of resources, supplies, product markets, and business competition (Schermerhorn, Hunt & Osborn, 2000).

Friedman (2005) in his book, The World is Flat suggested America’s place in the global economy is not secure and if America hopes to be a competitive nation it must aspire to send every citizen to college. A sizable task when no more than 30 percent of the adult population have a bachelor’s degree (Gallagher, 2005). Intellectual prowess will be the new currency throughout the globe, as it is expected over the next twenty years more than 12 million jobs in America will require postsecondary education (Pusser, et. al, 2005). Increase job creation will therefore precipitate a need for postsecondary as a necessity, the expectation that of the 12 million jobs to developed over the next twenty years a much as 60 percent will require some form of postsecondary training or experience (Gallagher, 2005).

In the context of higher education, globalization is a process of opening closed or semi-closed and expanding markets for educational services (Douglass, 2005).The affect of globalization on higher education according to Levin (2001) as cited in Townsend and Twombly has required community colleges respond to globalization by situating themselves closer to the marketplace.