Community Colleges, Future Challenges

Introduction

Community colleges are educational institution that provide higher education and lower tertiary education , grant certificates , diplomas and associates degrees in the U .S .A (Alice James , 1998 . Before the 70s and 80s they were called junior colleges and used to be private two year institution but now refers to publicly funded two year institutions Much of the earlier founded colleges were an extension of high schools thus were reflective of high school requirements and lacked a capacity to handle their newly gained status . There was a shift in the purpose of

br junior colleges towards developing a new workforce with influence from widespread unemployment during the great depression . Developing `semi-professionals ' became dominant word to describe junior college students . A term based education for a two years period in a college could be more efficient to students who could not be enrolled at campuses by allowing them to get undergraduate degrees . After the World War II the colleges saw the need of transforming themselves to cater for the diverse educational needs

History

Introduction and subsequent growth of these colleges was fostered by numerous events . One factor was the agitation from social and economic fields that started in early 20th century . Different groups advocated for community colleges among them students , parents , educators businesses , state universities , and government officials . Urbanization industrialization , and economic development caused transitions in society and junior colleges ware caught up in the transition and soon there was need for the colleges to restructure their way of operation so as to cater for the pressure from the community in meeting their educational expectations . Now the institutions could meet peoples service welfare from a wide range of courses on offer . The educational needs of the old population were also considered . Success of the colleges was due to cheap building , operating and maintenance costs due to simpler constructions and lack of hostels (Alice James , 1998

Challenges of community colleges

A wide variety of challenges ranging from monetary constraints , modern scientific advancements , domestic pressure to high population from non citizens of U .S . A big challenge can be the transferring credits caused by a variation in enrollment requirements across different states Similar , many courses are frequently taught by the part-time lecturers with a master 's or a bachelor 's degree concerned area an inquiry into this has proved that graduation rates are lower in a part-time workforce than those having a full-time faculty workforce . Absence of on-campus housing is an obstacle to the colleges in the sense that it generates the so-called 'commuter campuses , in which almost all students travel to class daily . This makes the task of organization of the team work and partnership among the students almost impossible to implement . This deals a big blow to the development of co-curricular activities Furthermore the social benefits of the colleges are almost affecting the potential employment opportunities to the students (Alice James , 1998 . The institutions have smaller libraries than varsities possibly minimizing the research opportunities to their students . The colleges provide fewer number...