I’m Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer at The Chronicle covering innovation in and around academe.
Starting this week we’re making some changes in The Edge. I’ll continue to report, write, and produce this newsletter, but some weeks, it will lead off with contributions from my colleagues. This week you’ll hear from Scott Carlson on the “dirty secret” that obstructs transfer, and how good design can support students.
Straight talk on community colleges.
Community colleges are in a strange position these days: They are the keystone for the nation’s plan to help more people earn a postsecondary credential, and at the same time an underfunded and disrespected piece of the higher-ed puzzle.
“Disrespected” is a strong word, but shouldn’t we call it like it is? Last week I co-hosted a panel discussion with Michael Sorrell, president of Paul Quinn College, where we encouraged candor on the issues facing two-year institutions — and the broader system’s narratives about them. Here is some of what we heard:
Transfer isn’t getting (that much) easier.
We have been talking about the problems with transfer from two- to four-year institutions for decades, yet it persists as a major barrier for students, particularly those who are low-income, first-generation, and unfamiliar with the ins and outs of higher ed. In a sector driven by prestige and competition, should we wonder why some states and systems continue to make that process opaque and difficult?
“Let’s just put the little dirty secret out there,” said Sorrell. “They don’t necessarily want community-college students to transfer.” For all the lip service that institutions give to student-centeredness and social mobility, many four-year colleges are still hung up on biases about rigor.
“It’s an ethos and a culture issue,” said Latricia D. Brand, chief diversity officer at Portland Community College. “Many of our four-year peers truly do understand and appreciate the mission of community college, but don’t necessarily know that it’s so clearly aligned to their mission, when it is.”
Improving transfer from two- to four-year institutions can’t be only about procedural reforms, said Shauna Davis, the Lumina Foundation’s strategy director for participation at community colleges. “If people just don’t want students to come, because they think the institution is less than, then that has to be addressed head on. And that’s not something that comes from a larger systemic policy change per se.”
At the City University of New York, “transfer students do just as well — or better than — so called ‘native students,’” said Niesha Ziehmke, associate dean for academic affairs at Guttman Community College. If data can diminish those doubts, maybe there would be more attention to broad solutions, instead of the status quo, where “we just sort of like scrape, scrape, scrape, scrape forward to try to do little fixes or improvements,” she said. (Folks in the panel’s audience shared some transfer-enabling websites they liked: NJ Transfer and the University Center of Lake County, in Illinois.)
Where there isn’t a will, state legislation or demographic challenges may force more four-years to remove barriers to transfer.
You can’t underestimate the role of good design.
During the pandemic, two-year institutions, reeling from enrollment losses, have worked to set up (and maintain) students’ access to online instruction and services and to meet their basic needs. Colleges distributed laptops and hotspots and put more resources into food pantries and other essentials (Long Beach City College is now letting students sleep in cars in a campus garage).
Government relief funds made many of those adjustments possible. A great challenge now, we heard from the audience, is finding ways to keep new practices going — and refine them — without the same level of federal support.
“There becomes the difference between making something functionally available versus good design,” said Davis. “Are we making people click through five things and, in turn, four pages, in order to get an advising appointment? There has to be a better way.” Many institutions, she pointed out, are underutilizing the technology they already have on campus.
At Portland Community College, a “tremendous amount” of relief funds are going to infrastructure, said Brand, and findings from student surveys are guiding those investments. “In some instances, we’re learning that what our students are saying is working for them is going to require a radical shift in how we deliver,” she said.
Student services that were not online pre-pandemic need to stay online now, said Ziehmke, at Guttman. Having a financial-aid or advising appointment on Zoom in the evening can make all the difference to a student who has to rush out after (an in-person or online) class to get to work or take care of family obligations, said Barbara Gooch, a student at Volunteer State Community College, in Tennessee.
She spoke blunt truths about what it was like to be a student parent — and student grandparent — working toward an associate degree and planning to transfer to a four-year university. “We talk a lot about ‘good design.’ I would rather just say, Can we just have basic design?” she said, applying that not only to support services, but to courses.
Working links help — and more emphasis on learning the material than on busywork, she said. Professors tend to think that newly remote students are sitting at home, not having to commute, so they pile on the assignments — and sometimes require students to shift across various platforms to get everything done.
Good design, said Gooch, is remembering: “Who is your audience, your online students? What are you designing for? What is your purpose? That is what I think we really need to start asking.” —Scott Carlson
