American Community College

Chapter Five, "Finances: Sustaining and Allocating Resources," shows how community colleges secure funds and how funding efforts have changed as organizational styles at the colleges have changed. The chapter notes the changes wrought by cutbacks in public financial resources. The colleges are much larger than they were, draw more students, and enjoy much greater income from students. Tuition, local taxes and state revenues are the major sources of income.

Major questions, resolved in different ways at different colleges, are the cost and funding of different programs (remedial, occupational, etc.), the balance between local and state funding, and the formula for setting tuition and distributing student aid. In order to balance budgets, colleges have had to cut programs and personnel.

Chapter Six, "Instruction: Methods, Media, and Effects," argues that effective teaching is especially important in community colleges because it can encourage students just out of high school to pursue their education. Instructional techniques have expanded as technology has expanded, including use of television, computers, cognitive-style mapping, and writing. Despite this new technology and theory, "traditional methods of instruction still flourish" (155).

Learning resource centers expand traditional libraries to accommodate new technology and teaching me

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and teach students who are unprepared for traditional college-level studies is the single thorniest problem for community colleges" (236). The courses designed to deal with this problem include remedial, compensatory and developmental courses. They teach the basics of the three R's---reading, writing and arithmetic. Effective remedial instruction is combined with counseling, tutoring, study skills instruction, and other efforts to help such students stay in school and learn up to their potential. Assessments of these efforts and student tracking show that the remedial courses are effective. It is also important to apply more precise standards to the evaluation of these students and these programs so the community college maintains a realistic picture of what it is truly accomplishing. Chapter Ten, "Community Education: Extending College Services and Training," covers adult education, adult basic education, continuing education, contract training, community services, and community-based education. These services remain an important part of the community college, but economic constraints have slowed their growth since the 1980s. These services emphasize the importance of the word "community" in the term "community college." The
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Approximate Word count = 1396
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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