Both consumers and industry are expecting colleges to deliver courses to their doorstep. Budgets are shrinking and in some areas so are high school graduates. Higher education must respond or industry will take over. That is where the deans and chairs must wrestle with a host of planning, workload and other issues. A goal must always be to maintain the same quality in distance education as on campus education.
Planning is the key to quality distance education.
This planning becomes the responsibility of the chair and the dean. Within the next twelve years, approximately 40 percent of all community college faculty who now teach will retire. How new faculty are selected will be one of the most important issues community colleges confront. We urge each community college to commit itself to the recruitment and retention of a top quality faculty and to the professional development of these colleagues. It is through the careful selection and continuous renewal of faculty that the future of the community college will be built.