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MCC Daily Tribune Archive

President's Wednesday Message


I spent part of last week in San Francisco at the Association of Community College Trustees Annual Congress, and in addition to a wicked cold, I picked up some clear messages about the future of community colleges.  The tagline for the gathering was “Achieving Success in a Global Economy -- Navigating the Educational Landscape during Turbulent Times.”  Here’s a brief recap of the key threads that ran through the meeting:

-- It’s a New Day for Workforce Development:  Jamie Merisotis, President and CEO for the Lumina Foundation, probably put it most succinctly in his keynote, when he observed that the idea that workforce education and higher education are separate is “dangerously outmoded, a false dichotomy.”  Speaker after speaker tied the two together in practice and in their shared ability to impact the prosperity of our nation.  The work of the National Center on Education and the Economy (notably the report at https://www.skillscommission.org) really was front and center, again suggesting that the focus of the increasing interest in community colleges is driven in large part by the economy.

-- It’s All about Completions:  Both Merisotis and Undersecretary for Education Martha Kanter, along with speakers at session after session, echoed the call for increased degree completions heard in the American Graduation Initiative.  Essentially, the goal is to increase the percentage of Americans with college degrees from 40% to 60% in the next decade.  But, there was a key caveat about these degrees . . .

-- It’s also All about Quality and Accountability:  All the keynoters hit the quality message repeatedly.  Each stressed the importance of transparency in accountability, in building a culture of evidence to support and document the quality of the educational process.  There is also a strong push for benchmarking and institutional comparisons on a defined framework of accountability measures that can be tied to funding—and a signal that community colleges should be able to play a more significant role in defining measures that better address and reflect the student populations they serve.

-- It’s a Once in a Lifetime Chance for Community Colleges to Share their Stories:  Several sessions focused on this unique time in higher education history, a time when community colleges are front and center.  One speaker (a national higher education editor) told his session that they needed to understand that this is simply unprecedented and that community colleges should not let this moment go to waste.  Over and over, the emphasis was placed on our responsibility to our students to make their voices heard.  As one keynoter put it, community colleges are “the conscience of the community.”

Any thoughts about these messages?  Please share them with me.  Next week, why should we “make courtesy common”?

Anne Kress
President's Office
10/14/2009