At John’s recommendation, I’m (finally) starting to read Howard Tinberg’s Writing and Knowing in the Two-Year College. I look up to John, and his recommendation is certainly enough for me, but I was talking with a compositionist colleague in the computer lab today, and my colleague — with some puzzlement — asked me, “But why are you interested in community colleges?”
It gave me pause. My initial reaction would have been to say, “Well, with my interest in socioeconomic class, why would I not be?” But what does that mean, really? How might an interest in class incline a university-based graduate student towards an interest in community colleges?
John and Cindy and others have talked about this before, of course, but the institutional blindness that university-based compositionists maintain towards teaching practices in two-year colleges continues to amaze me. Here at UMass Amherst, almost all students (seem to) have the same goal: a four-year degree. Such homogeneity of purpose is at least somewhat useful to me in defining the relatively homogenous economic ends that four-year students see their degrees as serving, but also dangerous, in that it helps students and faculty see both their purposes and the purposes of higher education in general as serving a rather homogenous and unified capitalist market economy. (OK: that conclusion is a big leap, and I’ll leave it open for further interrogation.)
On the other hand, students at two-year institutions constitute a far more diverse population, who envision far more diverse purposes for their educations. Some are there for accreditation, some to earn transfer credits, some for continuing education and career purposes, some simply for financial reasons, and so on. These purposes seem to me to much more adequately fit with the paradigm of the diverse and not-necessarily-capitalist economy posited by J. K. Gibson-Graham. In the very first paragraph of his Introduction, Tinberg confirms both my hopes and my fears vis-a-vis perceptions of the purposes of two-year colleges, naming the two missions of such institutions as being “to provide vocational training and to prepare students for transfer to colleges and universities” (vii). That’s pretty grim: we’re either creating a worker class or pushing students into the fancier schools. Yes, Tinberg addresses schools’ diversity of purposes, but he also sets up (or, perhaps more properly, perpetuates) a scary binary.
But at least he’s explicit about it. University-based compositionists, by and large, seem to me to happily and entirely ignore the “vocational training” aspect, or else take it for granted, as something not worth mentioning. So: is that perhaps due to the relative homogeneity of our classes, as compared to those of community colleges? My dissertation-blinkered perspective makes me want to holler that all of this is so, so economic in nature, and I’d be really grateful for either a confirmation or a reality check.
Since yesterday, I’m about halfway through Ira Shor’s 1980 indictment of the community colleges and vocationalism–_Critical Teaching and Everyday Life_.
He bags on “undemocratic machine culture,” then takes us on a bull-to-china rampage through the CC design, reducing it to an opiate for liberating the masses into the workforce–a worker-replication instrument built on false dreams of wealth and upward mobility. Sum: out with conscientization, out with Freirian teaching and learning. Vocationalism and critical thought are incompatible (for a whole bunch of reasons he offers).
I don’t agree with several of Shor’s sweeps, of course, but I bring it here to offer the possibility that his ideas carry forward with considerable force. It’s a much more complicated scene today, I think, than it was in 1980 (even 1987, when CTEL reprinted), because four-years and two-years have blended. The “two-years do vo-tech training, four-years do critical thought stuff” just isn’t the case any longer. Four-years are loading up with vocational emphases and many two-years have grown incredibly rich, thoughtful liberal arts cores that rival the lower division offerings of their four-year counterparts–big and small, public and private. I’ll stop here b/c I haven’t finished Shor and I’m not saying anything much that I suppose you haven’t already considered. I just meant to point out the “vocationalism is the enemy” notion gets pushed by Shor, and takes ideological root as a counter to critical thought, liberatory pedagogy and Freire’s impact on the field of comp.
Mike–why don’t you post these ideas over at Community College English? We could use your thoughts.
Joanna
When I was a TA at a research university, I found my students to be as focused on education solely as the means to “getting a job” as any of my students at my CC. How are they really any different from the “vocationally trained” when we get right down to it? This is what bothers me about some (much?) of the four-year attitude toward the two-year colleges.
Interesting points. What I’m getting at in terms of ‘vocationalization’, I think, is that there seems to be an attitude on the part of students that four-year colleges serve a primarily credentialing function: it’s not that the content of courses will necessarily be highly relevant in the job market except in that they may predispose one to think like an engineer or a sociologist or whatever, and offer the basic foundational knowledge for such disciplines.
While two-year colleges also perform a credentialing function, I wonder whether they also offer a more particularly skills-oriented curriculum to the students who are there who are not so much interested in that credentialing function. Cindy, Joanna, John — what do you think?
Maybe I can try to make it a little more clear what I’m talking about, with a dismayingly commodified example. At The Four-Year Institution Shopping Mart, you give them a check for $100 — no less, no more — up front and take your shopping cart down the aisles, filling it all the way up with a diverse array of products, but perhaps with a certain focus, that you’ll actually give to the particular corporate cashier at the checkout counter who you think will most like the selection of products you’ve taken, in the hopes that the cashier will in return give you a voucher good for one entry-level position in an appropriate career. At The Two-Year Institution Shopping Mart, it’s the same arrangement, only you can spend however much or little you like.
I’m not sure how well that analogy works — but if it does, does it begin to get at the differing ways commodification and vocationalization work at different institutions?
(p.s.: Joanna, I don’t have posting privileges over there, and I don’t really think I ought to, since I feel I have zero expertise from which to post about community colleges — but maybe a two-year college teacher with more expertise than me, wink, might post a link?)
Good and interesting points. I guess I would say/add two things to the equation. First, CCs and 4-year schools are starting to kind of merge in a lot of ways, at least from my perspective. Sure, you can go to a CC to learn to be a chef or a mechanic or something like that, but a lot of the folks over at Washtenaw CC or Henry Ford CC (and that’s just two in an area where there are a lot of CCs, 4 year schools, universities, etc.) are taking stuff there for a couple years that they know is going to transfer to places like EMU. And that’s just economically savvy: credit hours at Washtenaw CC, which has a really good reputation, are about half as much money as they are at EMU, which is known as a “good value” in the university market. If I had tight finances, I’d probably do the same thing.
Second, I’m not sure if the class issues are as simple as CC= working class and universities= elite. EMU is very much a “working class” university in a working class town. Most of our students come from less than privilege backgrounds, and the contrast in educational experiences, expectations, and economic class with that quaint liberal arts school in Ann Arbor is pretty striking. I guess what I’m getting at is students at Washtenaw tend to look a lot less out of place at EMU than they do at U of Michigan.
More of my students in FYComp at the community college were headed for the 4-Year schools than not. Worth mentioning, however, is the fact that only those in the “transfer” divisions took FY comp. This, for me, was where the real divide came in: those who were headed for more school had comp classes; those enrolled in the explicitly vocational programs (culinary arts/hospitality/etc.) had, I suppose, their own writing requirements, but they were never in any of my classes.
Here’s a Sunday morning’s worth of thoughts: speaking of economics, university grad students, and undergrads of every stripe, I think that a great reason for a university grad student to take note of the CC’s is because she may be looking for work at one some day.
I ordered Tinberg’s book the other day (serendipity, huh?) and can’t chime in on what he is writing. . .yet.
Has anyone recently done a comparative study of reasons why students choose the 2- or 4-year route? Where do the reasons intersect? Where can we presume homogeneity of student or program at any institution these days? For instance, how many colleges and universities, public and private, have degree and certificate programs created for the adult learner, like University College at The University of Maryland? It used to be that the adult learner had fewer choices once she or he left the CC– now people can continue (or begin) their degrees through Saturday classes, online classes and so forth.
All of which leads me to wonder if the university compositionalists ignore or study adult students in these programs. Do they? Do they not?
The September issue of Teaching English in the Two-Year College (edited by non other than Mr. Tinberg himself) is devoted to scholarship, teaching and the two-year college. Once I’ve digested it, I’ll be posting my thoughts over at CCE, which, yes, Mike, does not grant you posting privileges, but I have friends and said privileges can be easily arranged as can my simply linking to your site.
Oh, boy–I should be reading response papers, but y’all have gotten on my favorite topic here. I’ll make a few points here–and maybe do some blogging tonight (after papers).
I’m really impressed to see Mike reading Tinberg and Derek reading Shor. And great to see Steve noting that when it comes to working class, there’s a lot of overlap among CC’s and many public universities.
Here’s my problem with Shor’s vocationalism, tool-of-the-corporate-interests argument: he’s never looked at community colleges nationally. He grew out of the big open admissions flap in New York that gave us Mina Shaughnessy, Don McQuade, Lynn Troyka and many others. He draws on critiques really popular with left-leaning scholars in the early 70s–almost none of it coming from scholars will long experience in community colleges.
Here are some key sources: Burton Clark, “The ‘Cooling Out Function’ in Higher Education.” American journal of Sociology (May 1960), 65: 569-576. Also the same year Clark published The Open Door College with McGraw-Hill.
Sam Bowles and Herbert Gintis had an article in the Harvard Educational Review in the early 70s that extended the radical left economic argument regarding CCs as vocational dead ends. They put it in book form in 1976: Schooling in Capitalist America, Basic Books.
In the early 70s, I did an article I titled “The Role of Criticism in Community Colleges” and revised it in 1982. The only place I submitted was Harvard Educational Review, which rejected it because, said the letter, “my reach was greater than my grasp.” My own naivete about academic publishing let me accept this response at the time. It also made clear to me that those who had published on the CCs were heavily invested in the Clark-Bowles/Gintis critique that Shor has been megaphoning for 20 years. I’m not aware that Ira has done any new work or that he keeps up with the literature on CCs. We’ve had a few interesting exchanges at various CCCC panels–and he acknowledges having no awareness of CC’s in California, for instance.
Jerome Karabel has also influenced this discussion with his Harvard Ed Review article “Community Colleges and Social Stratification” in 1972, 42: 521-562.
Another thought on the “vocational” nature of community colleges. Lots of young people graduate from universities with humanities degrees and no vocational skills. Some, with baccalaureate in hand, go to CC’s to add some practical coursework, perhaps in computer programming or real estate or, as one of my friends did, film-making.
Rick was a top student out of the local Jesuit high school and did a double major in philosophy and anthropology at Santa Clara, where both his father and grandfather attended. But he was working in retail trying to figure out what he wanted to do. He had an interest in documentaries, so he came to De Anza and completed our sequence of film production courses. [We also have a great program in animation now.] He started working on his documentary and got some work at San Francisco TV stations. Then he went to San Francisco State to do a Master’s in film production.
A concept that some CC leaders have tried to promote for assessing CC outcomes is “value added.” Even a student who never completes a certificate may have made important improvements in reading, writing or math skills that give both personal and social value, but we have no measures for capturing this outcome.
In philosophy last week there appeared, fresh from two years at Swarthmore, a student we community college folks call a “reverse transfer.” (Dad’s checkbook, I gather, has slimmed down recently.) He has yet to compete with a couple of older students who are quite likely to spin circles around him. There even may be some younger folks up to the task. Although I’m sure he’s smiled our borderline “crazy” up front, I know he’s winked at a one student’s wish to be called “Bubba.” A great many others did, too. The point I’m making is simple: community college teaching is complex — and, really, quite a joy!
P.S. A good, solid, useful text is Henry Giroux and David Purple’s Moral Education and the Hidden Cirruculum (1983).
Styles, that’s another good point to throw into the discussion. Are we assuming that going to college is a straight-line, start -to- finish, with no reverse transfers? Or that a student is only working one one degree at a time? I have a student who is finishing an associate’s degree in hospitality services and a BA in business administration at a local 4-year. He is also an older, returning student.
Most people *need* to be attuned to the career possibilities in their field of study, because they do not have parents or trust funds able to support them when they get out. It’s just that this career orientation is often manifested differently depending on their class background. There is nothing inherently less “vocational” about a law degree than in a certificate in programming CNC machine tools. The fact that someone is able to attend a 4-years college does not automatically mean that he is committed to the idea of liberal education, and the fact that someone attends a 2-year does not mean that he is unable to benefit from such education.
Serious efforts should be made to provide the core of a liberal education for 2-year students as well as 4-year students. I salute those of you who are participating in this work.
Steve, thanks for the valuable point, which I think John’s response touches at least obliquely: it’s really quite hard to generalize when so many of the concerns we’re talking about are very strongly geographically bound. It’s a point John’s made before, of course, about the inadequately examined differences between West Coast and East Coast education (hey! We’re like gangsta rappers! — does this mean that John is the Dre to Joanna’s Nas?), and as you point out, Steve, geographic difference if often strongly linked to economic difference.
Joanna, I don’t think that we’re making that assumption about straight-line education: my own undergraduate career at three different schools (interestingly enough, a small, exclusive, expensive private school, a small campus of a big community college, and a big public state school), as well as the advice Styles offers, is enough to check me on making that assumption. However, I do think that in trying to sort these issues out, one must occasionally employ Occam’s razor and eliminate some of the many variables — in other words, I know there’s no general conclusion that’ll account for every single case, but for me that’s no reason not to try and reach such a conclusion.
Styles, if I find a minute, I might take a look at the rather-famously-doesn’t-teach Giroux, but I already kinda mistrust him for what I see as his perversion of Frierean critical pedagogy into watered-down cultural studies.
And, finally, John, thanks for the big and thoughtful response. I’m gonna take a while to get my head around it before commenting back.
We not only have the “reverse transfer”, but we have the “zig-zag student.” Marlene Griffith and Ann Connor document this nicely in Democracy’s Open Door. They have a good range of profiles showing how students of different backgrounds (including varying ethnicities and economic levels) dip in and out of community colleges, sometimes moving between 2 and 4 year campuses several times into graduate school.
One of the reasons good data is hard to find is that most major studies of student persistence look for a result within 6 or 8 years of leaving high school. While that captures the academic path for a lot of students, it misses lots of others (like, say, someone who spends a hitch in the U. S. Army before completing schooling).
And the student who delays schooling is more likely to start in at a community college than at Princeton (or your favorite PRESTIGIOUS INSTITUTION).
Another anecdote: guy grows up in Montana in coal-mining country, his mother an American Indian. His mother dies young, he hits the road, gets involved in financial businesses and becomes a broker (self-taught). But he always wanted to go to college and he wanted to write. So he’s made his money, he’s over 50 and he comes to De Anza’s Honors Program to get a foundation, then transfers to Stanford where he takes an interdisciplinary program, and gets involved with the Stegner Creative Writing Program. He graduated in June, 2003.
The “value-added” concept has a lot of appeal to me. The flexibility of the CC is seen by some as lack of focus or standards. But it also means almost any citizen can use a CC to further their own educational agenda. Again, I would claim that’s an American educational value in contrast to the European values that undergird the university.
I think the “reverse-transfer” scenario is becoming so common that it cannot be dismissed as merely anecdotal but must instead be given serious consideration in any discussion of who 2-year and 4- year students tend to be. Economics have necessitated this in two ways: the need for retraining for many folks and the cost of tuition at the 4-years.