Communications of the ACM
Five Million Reasons To Love Your Local Community College
Credit: Olympic College
With the Obama Administration calling for five million additional graduates by the year 2020, community colleges are emerging as a key focal point for the nation's leading educators. After long being ignored, community colleges are now set to receive billions of dollars in federal funding and are attracting the attention of educational leaders across the nation. Community colleges are at the forefront of embracing online learning and have extensive collaborative ties to local industry and their local communities. As a result, mentoring opportunities at the community college level are gaining in popularity and importance.
There are a number of reasons why community colleges are particularly fertile environments for new mentoring relationships. Their students are disproportionately likely to be from an underserved or underrepresented minority ethnic group. In addition, they are most likely to be working full-time, first-generation college-goers, inner city or rural, speakers of English as a second language, immigrants or first generation Americans, part-time students, poor, older, and to have children of their own. At the same time, these attributes make them important engines of diversity, acculturation, and prosperity. When these students are employed in well-paying positions, this has a huge ripple effect on the wealth of their families, communities, and states, since they are also more likely to work closer to home when they graduate.
Almost half of all community college programs (both majors and concentrations) are in technical fields such as engineering technologies, Web design and computer programming. These programs then act as feeders to jobs in the U.S. technical and scientific sectors. Based on its track record of success at universities and colleges, MentorNet has developed a script for guiding e-mentoring for community college students. MentorNet already has partnerships with community colleges in Hawaii, Wisconsin and Minnesota, and is working to expand into other states. By doing so, the organization can help bring industry to students and students to industry by fostering one-on-one relationships.
From MentorNet News
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