What Excellent Community Colleges Do: Preparing All Students for Success

What Excellent Community Colleges Do: Preparing All Students for Success Joshua S. Wyner Cambridge: Harvard Education Publishing Group, 2014. 200 pages. $26.95 USD/Paperback The demographics of our country and the skills needed for the modern work force have changed dramatically in a relatively short time. By contrast, the educational practices of our community colleges have not. This has a created what many would consider a severely broken system that is failing to provide students the path we know often leads to success. What Excellent Community Colleges Do: Preparing All Students for Success is an inspirational wakeup call for all faculty, staff, and administration that have devoted their careers to working in our field. What Joshua S. Wyner, the Founder and Executive Director of The Aspen Institute's College Excellence Program, has provided is a clear and jarring look at the changes and practices that have successfully transformed traditional community colleges, facing a multitude of serious challenges, into what he deems "excellent community colleges. " The Aspen Institute has scoured hundreds of community colleges across the nation in the search to find what policies and practices have been proven to be most effective in creating institutions of success. Wyner clearly discusses, in detail, four overarching criteria: completion rates, equity, student learning outcomes, and labor market applicability. These are the criteria evaluated in deciding what community colleges are considered as finalists and winners of the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. The text is written in a very clear and accessible seven-chapter format that is not laden with esoteric language. The first chapter provides us an introduction to the massive demographic changes that have occurred at community colleges, and introduces the four criteria aforementioned. These domains are then discussed individually in Chapters 2-5. Chapter 6 is devoted to the characteristics of an effective community college president, with recommendations on how other higher education officials could enhance their leadership. The final chapter concludes with the positive changes that are now occurring at community colleges, and the urgent need to continue deep reform at other institutions across the country. There are also two Appendices: One providing a profile of the seven colleges frequently highlighted as winners and finalists in the Aspen Prize, and the last providing us the quantitative and qualitative data that are reviewed by Aspen in their search for excellent community colleges. What makes this text so remarkable is that the colleges that are considered winners and finalists vary greatly in demographics, but are able to accomplish the goal of creating highly successful institutions of learning. They do so by critically looking at and proactively improving these four crucial domains. From traditional large, urban campuses, whose student body now primarily consists of low-income, minority, and immigrant populations, to smaller colleges in rural areas of the country that focus more on technical degrees and certifications, Wyner effectively demonstrates how each of the seven colleges profiled have uniquely critiqued and revamped their programs and policies to provide their students much better pathways for success at school and in the workforce. …