Recently Federal Government announced that there would be a $9 billion block grant for improving 2-year colleges. With such an amount of grant, the high expectation is inevitable.
To Achieve the Dream, U.S. House of Representatives laid out a series of benchmarks that colleges and states would have to meet to receive the grants. Though still under the floor action, suggested goals such as program completion, work-force preparation, and job placement and so on are familiar anticipations to the interested parties.
I have an ambivalent perspective toward this grandiose event as an instructor at a two-year Tech college for six years. The aid can be an edu-political good will with turbulence run deep underneath this unique educational system. It can be a high time to diagnose the accumulated problems and controversies with systematic/systemic approach instead of the habitual piece-meal work.
In terms of access vs. success, 2-year colleges are not exactly FOR the under-served, OF the less-prepared, and least BY the under-privileged. As the saying goes, it is much more a unique hybrid entity of socio-politics, industrial-business compound, and rhetoric than that of the concern of what teaching and learning actually happens to improve the “human capital”.
I am still baffled by the long term “sacrosanct”(sacred cow?) state imposed on the 2-year colleges. What I am looking for is a systematic and theoretical based of this multifunctional and controversial system to be tangibly understood by the majority of stakeholders, like that of the K-12, or at least the 15+ systems.
This lost child (13-14) educational setting shall not be an edu-business-political hot potato as it used to be! I am embarking on piecing together for this missing link.
Here is my tiny step- http://cvtcscholarship.wetpaint.com - a developing wikiblog invites your input.
To Achieve the Dream, U.S. House of Representatives laid out a series of benchmarks that colleges and states would have to meet to receive the grants. Though still under the floor action, suggested goals such as program completion, work-force preparation, and job placement and so on are familiar anticipations to the interested parties.
I have an ambivalent perspective toward this grandiose event as an instructor at a two-year Tech college for six years. The aid can be an edu-political good will with turbulence run deep underneath this unique educational system. It can be a high time to diagnose the accumulated problems and controversies with systematic/systemic approach instead of the habitual piece-meal work.
In terms of access vs. success, 2-year colleges are not exactly FOR the under-served, OF the less-prepared, and least BY the under-privileged. As the saying goes, it is much more a unique hybrid entity of socio-politics, industrial-business compound, and rhetoric than that of the concern of what teaching and learning actually happens to improve the “human capital”.
I am still baffled by the long term “sacrosanct”(sacred cow?) state imposed on the 2-year colleges. What I am looking for is a systematic and theoretical based of this multifunctional and controversial system to be tangibly understood by the majority of stakeholders, like that of the K-12, or at least the 15+ systems.
This lost child (13-14) educational setting shall not be an edu-business-political hot potato as it used to be! I am embarking on piecing together for this missing link.
Here is my tiny step- http://cvtcscholarship.wetpaint.com - a developing wikiblog invites your input.