Confessions of a Community College Administrator E-Book

Matthew Reed

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Bildung
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 334

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Written by Matthew Reed, the formerly anonymous author of InsideHigher Ed's most popular blog, Confessions of a Community CollegeDean, this book offers keen insights, a frank discussion, andsuggested solutions for the many issues that are unique tocommunity college administration. In Confessions of a Community College Administrator Reeddescribes the current landscape of community college leadership andaddresses some of the fundamental questions that face communitycolleges. Who does a community college actually serve? How doadministrators really make budget decisions? Where do the roots ofthe "permanent crisis" in higher education lie? How are full-timeand adjunct faculty best balanced? Throughout the book, Reed offers guidance and encouragement forthe next generation of community college leaders. He examines a setof proposed solutions from outside academia, then turns to othersolutions emerging from inside the community college world thatalso show potential for success. Confessions of a Community College Administrator is filled withrealistic, and ultimately hopeful, advice on how to step back fromthe day-to-day administrative struggles and gain some perspectiveon the larger picture. Reed offers administrators useful andproductive directions for constructive change.

Leseprobe

Contents

About the Author

Acknowledgments

Foreword

Introduction

Chapter 1: The Community College Landscape

Diffuse Missions

Community Colleges in the Hierarchy of Higher Education

An Awkward Position

Phase Shifts

From Time to Space

Looking into the Future

Chapter 2: Funding: Where the Money Comes From, Where It Goes, and Why There’s Never Enough

Operating Budgets

Capital Budgets

Revenue Sources: Silver Linings, Complete with Clouds

The Bottom Line

Chapter 3: Community College Administration: Who Does What

The Community College Hierarchy

The Dean’s Job: Make Juggling Look Easy

The Reality of Shared Governance

Governance on the Ground

Chapter 4: Herding Cats: Managing Creative People

Working with Faculty

Hiring, Firing, and Promotions

Choosing Your Battles

Chapter 5: Regular Challenges of the Dean’s Job

Surviving Administrative Turnover—or Not

Making Transparency Work in Your Favor

Running Meetings Effectively

Weighing in on Academic Issues

Dealing with Helicopter Parents

Coping with “Academic Freedom”

Finding Balance

Acting Like a Dean

Chapter 6: Saving Community Colleges: A Few Modest Proposals

Inside For-Profits

Beyond For-Profits: Doing What We Do, Better

The Choice: Evolve or Decline

Conclusion

References

Index

Cover image: ©Jorgen Jacobsen/iStockphoto

Cover design: Michael Cook

Author photo: © Kimberly Deprey/Ravishing Photography

Copyright © 2013 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Cataloging-in-Publication data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-118-00473-9 (pbk.); ISBN 978-1-118-22172-3 (ebk.);

ISBN 978-1-118-23553-9 (ebk.); ISBN 978-1-118-26038-8 (ebk.)

The Jossey-Bass Higher Education Series

About the Author

Matthew Reed is the vice president for academic affairs at Holyoke Community College in Holyoke, Massachusetts. He was previously the division dean of liberal arts at the County College of Morris, New Jersey, and the dean of general education at DeVry University in North Brunswick, New Jersey. He has written the Confessions of a Community College Dean blog, as “Dean Dad,” since 2004. He has taught at Rutgers University, Kean University, DeVry, and the County College of Morris. He has published articles in New Political Science and Diversity Digest, and won the Best Presentation award from the Undergraduate Education section of the American Political Science Association in 1999. He has a PhD in political science from Rutgers University and a BA from Williams College. He lives in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts, with his wife, Carolyn, their son, Kyle, and their daughter, Jessica.

Acknowledgments

READERS, COWORKERS, AND LONGTIME FRIENDS HAVE BEEN WONDERFUL supporters over the years. Mike Greenfield and Bernard Tamas have been there since the beginning. Jeff Angus’s “Management by Baseball” and Tedra Osell’s “Bitch, Ph.D.” were early role models. So many wonderful interlocutors have come and gone over the years, variously challenging me to rethink and encouraging the effort. Without their feedback, I would have dropped it all years ago.

Although they may not know or recognize their contributions, I’ll ask the following to trust that their influence is here: Mary Aun, Barry Batorsky, Jack Becherer, Bettina Caluori, Jessica Chambers, Peter Conolly-Smith, Danielle Donders, Jim Dutcher, Nikki Edgecombe, Patrick Enright, Bill Fogarty, Linda Fogarty, Andrea Habura, Mark Hinrichs, Stephen Karlson, Dominic Latorraca, Herb Lebowitz, Aaron Levin, Sue Mackler, Lori Messinger, Bill Messner, Marcia Morrison, Mary Orisich, Tracy Ross, Anca Rosu, Bette Simmons, Idelia Smith, Bhupinder Sran, Linda Terranova, Wendolyn Tetlow, Yanina Vargas, and John Weber.

Scott Jaschik from InsideHigherEd.com came along at exactly the right moment and has been a wonderful support. My readers and commenters have taught me generously over the years; without their feedback, I likely would have dropped the whole enterprise in short order. David Brightman and Aneesa Davenport at Jossey-Bass were patient and encouraging as I struggled to make the transition from episodic to sustained writing. And Kay McClenney deserves special thanks for generously offering her time, words, and counsel.

My late father, Bill Reed, introduced me to academia through his own example. My mother, Kay Ford, toted barges and lifted bales to make it possible for me even to enter this profession, and has been a generous source of wisdom as I have struggled with all kinds of dilemmas. My brother, Brad Reed, slogged through an early draft of the manuscript and still speaks to me; I look forward to returning the favor.

And of course, Carolyn, Kyle, and Jessica—known on the blog as the Wife, the Boy, and the Girl—are the point of the whole enterprise. I thank them for putting up with me as I tried to fit the book in around a consuming day job, the blog, and the demands of parenthood. Without their regular reminders that there is more to life than work, I would have come unglued years ago.

Foreword

Kay McClenney

AMERICANS LIKE THEIR COMMUNITY COLLEGES. They particularly like the concept of opportunity afforded by these institutions. They believe that any American who is willing to work hard should have the opportunity to go to college. And remarkably, according to public opinion polling, many would be willing to pay additional taxes to ensure that community colleges continue to provide opportunity for all.

It seems that many people think of community colleges much as they do public utilities. You know they are there. You expect them to be available when you—or family members or neighbors or fellow citizens—need them: when a job is lost, when an affordable alternative to university tuition is the wise choice, when it’s Mom’s turn to further her education, when a new company moves to town and needs trained workers, when kids who haven’t been challenged in high school need to learn how to be effective college students, when small classes and personal attention are key to educational success.

Yet beyond holding these philosophical and utilitarian values, the general public understands little about how community colleges operate, how they are financed (or not), and what the challenges are in the work of making postsecondary education available in this country, with commitment to quality and affordability, for a wildly diverse student population. People also are typically surprised to learn that community colleges enroll close to half (44 percent) of the undergraduate students in the United States.

Unfortunately, these shortages of understanding all too often extend even into the ranks of higher education. Contrary to still-common belief, community colleges are not extensions of high schools and are not misshapen universities. They are not places where faculty and administrators are willing to sacrifice academic excellence for access—rather, they want both. These colleges are not, emphatically, places only for somebody else’s kids.

Community colleges in this century are the gateway to the American middle class. They are the country’s best hope for reversing the U.S. decline in educational attainment relative to other developed countries and for restoring losses in average family income. Recognizing this reality, a plethora of players—from the White House to the State House to the philanthropic community and the kitchen table—are taking community colleges more seriously than at any point in their one-hundred-plus-year history. The colleges are on the receiving end of welcome attention and sometimes uncomfortable scrutiny. The country needs them, and more than a few people wonder if they can step up and measure up.

It’s an open question and one that Matthew Reed takes on in this timely and useful book, seeking to help prepare the next generation of administrators and leaders for the challenges, large and small, that they must face. Despite the size of the community college sector (more than eleven hundred institutions serving over 7.5 million credit students), few young people envision a career in these colleges, whether as faculty members, student services professionals, or administrators. Many find their way to the colleges serendipitously or through part-time positions or by following their values. The career paths often are long and winding roads, filled with the sharp curves and potholes of learning by doing.

Furthermore, just at the time when community and societal needs for community colleges are at an all-time high, the institutions (like other employment sectors) face massive turnover as baby boomers retire. An estimated 75 percent of current community college CEOs say that they plan to retire within the decade, according to the American Association of Community Colleges. And the “pipeline” positions—typically vice presidencies and provosts—are similarly populated with people nearing retirement age. Finding and developing women and men to assume leadership of community colleges, from midlevel to the top, knowing what they need to do and willing to do it, are critical priorities.

Fondly known to many readers only as “Dean Dad,” a pseudonym used as author of a popular Inside Higher Ed blog, Matthew Reed arrived on the national community college scene at an important juncture. Writing directly from the front lines of administration, he illuminates the work of managing and leading community colleges, describing with clarity and pathos, exasperation and humor, what it really entails. Yet his eyes rise from the mundane to the meaningful, from the problem in front of us to the much larger challenge on the horizon.

Reed begins the book by stating a solemn and accurate pair of truths: that community colleges face daunting challenges that they currently are not designed to meet, and that sustaining the key mission of these institutions—open access, with quality and affordability—is crucial to the society. Then, for the benefit both of those who seek to lead and those who seek to understand what leadership means in a dramatically changing environment, he peels the onion.

In the first two chapters, he provides context for the work of community college administration. Chapter One describes multiple missions, often competing with one another; low tuition; low prestige; and perpetual underfunding to do some of the most difficult work in education. Then Reed insists that the administrator’s job is to “make none of that matter.” Good start! Then he moves in Chapter Two to a more detailed exploration of the funding challenges of community colleges, destined to become not less but more acute in the future, especially if leaders take a business-as-usual approach.

Moving from context to daily reality, Reed uses the next three chapters to describe in concrete and occasionally ironic terms what academic deans and other administrators at community colleges actually do and the human, political, and organizational challenges they confront. No sugarcoating here, but illumination of real dynamics in real places. Sometimes it may sound like fiction, but it isn’t.

Chapter Six ends the book as it must, by addressing some fundamentals of community college design, questioning whether they are suited to the future, and concluding that they very likely are not. Again using real examples, Reed demonstrates the axiom that community colleges, like other organizations, are perfectly designed to produce precisely the results they are currently getting. Currently, those results are not good enough—for students, their communities, or the nation. And Reed offers constructive, even if also disruptive, alternatives.

His writing brings common sense, compassion, civility, and courage to dilemmas of daily work and to questions of institutional purpose, form, and viability. It is a voice we need, and just in time.

Kay McClenney is director of the Center for Community College Student Engagement and senior lecturer in the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas at Austin.

Introduction

I take it as given that the american community college in its current form is unsustainable. But I also take it as given that the purpose of the community college—providing high-quality education and training on a mass scale at low cost—has never been more important.

The next generation of community college leaders has its work cut out for it. If they wish to survive, community colleges will have to adapt in pretty dramatic ways. If they don’t, they will become increasingly ineffective and irrelevant, and their irrelevance will create a space for actors with other agendas to step in. It’s up to the next cohort of leaders to make some fundamental choices.

Most of the public has very little understanding of the issues behind institutional sustainability. It sees ever-escalating costs and wonders what colleges are thinking. Most of the people within higher education have very little understanding of sustainability, either, though for different reasons. They see cascading budget cuts and wonder what administrators (or the public) are thinking.