Jobs and the Labor Force of Tomorrow: Migration, Training, Education by Michael A. Pagano

Author:Michael A. Pagano [Pagano, Michael A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General, Labor & Industrial Relations, Social Science, Sociology, Urban, Education
ISBN: 9780252041532
Google: CCy2swEACAAJ
Goodreads: 34962032
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2017-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

Toward Reframing the Open Door

Policy, Pedagogy, and Developmental Education in the Urban Community College

GREGORY V. LARNELL

TWYLA T. BLACKMOND LARNELL

JOHN BRAGELMAN

The critical question is not who gains access to higher education, but rather what happens to people once they get there.

—Jerome Karabel, “Community Colleges and Social Stratification”

Community colleges are positioned at a perpetual crossroads. By mission, these two-year postsecondary education institutions are intended primarily to broaden access to higher education credentialing; that is, their curricular and advisory offerings aim to facilitate transitions either to four-year university study or to career trajectories that may require a higher-skilled workforce than a traditional high-school education would satisfy. At the same time, community college admissions are open admissions or nonselective institutions, meaning that students are not denied admission based on entry tests or academic background.

Community colleges represent one-fourth of all higher educational institutions in the United States and serve nearly half of all undergraduates.1 Furthermore, they serve “fully 58% of all African American undergraduates and 66% of all Hispanic undergraduates enrolled in community colleges.” These institutions also welcome the working student—“more than half of 2-year college students are employed, compared to only 37% of 4-year college students.”2

Although enrollments in two-year colleges rose briefly within the past decade—catalyzed by the most recent (U.S.) economic recession—completion rates have stagnated and have become a primary point of concern.3 Furthermore, for urban community colleges—those two-year institutions that draw the majority of their student population from their locations in or near metropolitan centers and, increasingly, from their satellite suburban communities—there is an added mission: urban community colleges have the conjoined goal of advancing individuals’ social mobility and feeding the engines of corporate industrialism and commercialism.

In this latter sense, urban community colleges represent both a social resource for urban communities and a long-standing platform for fostering urban economic development. The emergence of a more service-based economy has increased the demand for labor with specialized knowledge, training, and skills. These new industries—particularly those that are more reliant on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields—have elevated the importance of a postsecondary education, and mathematics continues to act as a primary gatekeeping discipline to STEM pathways.4

Developmental or remedial mathematics coursework, typically focused on the basic skills of arithmetic and algebra, has proven to be a mountainous obstacle for many students—disproportionately affecting those matriculating from inner-city public high schools or returning to college after being displaced from the labor market. Upon enrollment, however, a considerable number of these students are obligated to pass a remedial math course and often fail to progress to credit-bearing, “additive” courses.5 Without these course credentials, students are less likely to complete their degree, which jeopardizes their economic future. To systematically counter this growing problem, policy making at the national and local levels has focused heavily on improving access to higher education in order to reduce economic inequalities and promote growth in the economy. Unfortunately, policy makers have failed to delve further into the complexity of “remediation,” leaving many students stuck in place.

Toward shedding some light on this complexity and

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