78 college set up to do and what is my (the teacher's) contribution to these defined aims? A further source of confusion, some faculty reported ironically, was the very groups which might be presumed to be clarifying agencies: namely, accrediting boards and associations in the various regions. "These people are still using either old criteria or four-year college and university criteria on us," one department chairman said. "And far too often-in my experience, I've only seen one there isn't a single junior college faculty member on an accrediting team. They're all presidents and deans. So, they've got a special viewpoint. And, frankly, these guys are sometimes prone to scratch one another's backs where accreditation is concerned." At one college, a teacher remarked, "You know what we're doing here- I think? We're creating programs to meet accreditation criteria - instead of building the programs we know these students need." As previously mentioned, too, the student-centered attitude of the two-year colleges has broad implications for the future effectiveness of faculty. The attitude may, or may not, be laudable (this report is no place to make a judgment); but there is no doubt that it is time-consuming, and thus, not so eventually, expensive. Not the least part of the expense is the reduction of time and opportunities for teachers to keep themselves refreshed and up-to-date in their own disciplines. Yet the junior college teacher urgently and legitimately wants to be accepted as being "in higher education." He is not simply a teacher of grades thirteen and fourteen, though in numerous administrative contexts he is treated as one. He deals with college-age students; and, in addition, with adults from twenty to seventy years of age in evening divisions of his college. He works with collegelevel material. Particularly in vocational and technical fields, his aim is (must be) thoroughly pragmatic: the teaching of marketable skills. And also, in one sense, most liberal arts instruction partakes of the same pragmatism, namely, the production of transferable students. If these statements sound either nonacademic or undigni 79 fied, one has only to spend a few frank hours with faculty to accept their accuracy. In these, and many other respects, the situation of the junior college teacher is new. Solutions of his problems, and resolutions of issues affecting him, then, must be newly conceived and even boldly unorthodox. But unfortunately, it does not seem likely that the fresh, truly innovative thinking required is going to come from junior college administrators. Indeed, it is hardly too strong a statement to assert that the chief problem of the junior college teacher is, in its broadest sense, the often too-restrictive regulatory context in which he and his immediate administrators do their work. And, by extension, the major issue facing junior college instruction staffs in the future will be the growing shortage of trained, experienced, imaginative leadership, from presidents down to department heads, and assistant department heads. This shortage is already acute a fact both recognized and worriedly admitted by outstanding junior college leaders across the country. Indeed, the situation can be fairly compared to that of the Armed Services in the months preceding and following Pearl Harbor in 1941, when an enormous cadre of noncommissioned officers and junior officers had to be developed quickly to train and lead the hundreds of thousands of drafted troops flooding into camps. In many respects, this is an appropriate parallel. For example, a daily reading of newspaper clippings referring to junior colleges about the country reveals stories of bond issues passed, new colleges opened invariably with larger enrollments than predicted, and temporary buildings rented and hastily refurbished to accommodate overflow classes. This editorial, for example, is typical: The library is not yet open, the cafeteria is still not finished, the book store is in a temporary home, but County's new junior college has already earned itself a place that is anything but temporary or incomplete. Campus for some Classes open today at the 4,300 students, a far larger group than was expected by county voters when they approved creation of the junior college. The large enrollment speaks eloquently of the 80 gap that the school will fill in a day when education is the best investment in the future a community can make. (The president of the board of trustees) predicts that by 1975 as many as 40,000 students will be attending classes at and six suburban campuses. The prediction is not hard to believe... The sheer management of numbers alone is a staggering administrative task. Add to this, the creation of academic and vocational programs; the recruitment, orientation, and continued training of teaching and supporting staffs; and the assurance (to say nothing of the continuance) of quality instruction; and the measure of the administrative mandate can begin to be taken. It is true, of course, that top administrative talent is in chronic short supply in any endeavor. But with the hopes and expectations of the public for their junior colleges, and the hundreds of millions of dollars voted and annually authorized for these institutions, it would be an educational disaster for many of them to turn out to be, in effect, weeding-out stations for those unable to attend four-year colleges, or "intellectual baby-sitters," as some teachers have remarked, or second-rate learning experiences for those tens of thousands of potentially able students who, for economic reasons mainly, need the junior college to continue their education. The key to quality in the junior colleges, as of course in any schools, is the skilled, fully professional teacher. Most especially, at this point in the development of the junior college, his needs, the problems he identifies as pressing, require first priority and continued, urgent attention from his administrators, from the boards who allocate funds for the colleges, from his own immediate administrators, and — eventually — from the public which pays the bills and is expecting the benefits of the educational opportunities provided by these institutions. * A final word. This study has been a preliminary investigation. If its findings are even partially valid, it poses some vexing and wide-ranging questions which urgently require attention and increasing dialogue among all segments of the educational community. 81 In the recommendations that follow, suggestions are made which may provide a framework for a beginning strategy to achieve this dialogue. The recommendations necessarily are sketched in outline: they are intended as possible starting points, not as blueprints for fully developed action programs. For the most part, these are derived either directly from faculty recommendations; or they have been developed from the implications of repeated faculty statements. 22 82 Section Three:3 1. RECOMMENDATIONS 2. AN AGENDA OF BASIC QUESTIONS FOR COLLEGES Recommendations for Action 1. A National Committee for Junior College Faculty: This should be a group of outstanding individuals, with its membership drawn from four-year colleges and universities and from two-year colleges, with key academic disciplines particularly represented. Its members should be persons of national stature, so that statements made by the committee would command respect and attention from all segments of education. The committee, comprising not more than twelve members, should be in the nature of a task force, to address itself for eighteen months to two years, especially to the problems of the preparation and professional refreshment of two-year college teachers. Among matters that could be on the working agenda of the committee are the following: a. Develop guidelines for graduate work appropriate to the training of teachers b. Create patterns for special institutes, seminars, and conferences for the continuing professional refreshment and upgrading of faculty c. Develop recommendations pertaining to faculty load, problems of instruction inherent in the teaching of large groups, effective organization of academic departments, and similar matters d. Examine the range of professional organizations and their relationships to junior college faculty e. Be the sponsoring committee for special workshop meetings organized to attack specific problems. |