Vocationalism and the differentiation of tertiary education: lessons from US community colleges

Abstract

Many countries, including the US and England, have developed sub‐degree institutions within tertiary education—community colleges, further education colleges, and related institutions in other countries. The policy question is whether the differentiation of tertiary education has been a wise development, and whether the benefits—greater access to tertiary education, an emphasis on teaching, an ability to bridge different purposes, lower costs—outweigh the potentially negative effects on equity. In the US, a number of ways of blurring the boundaries between community colleges and universities have developed, representing potential solutions to some of the problems created by differentiated institutions.

Notes

1. Chevalier and Conlon (2003) refer to three tiers of universities: the Russell group, old universities, and the modern universities created from the former polytechnics. However, between 1990 and 1995 the old universities became quite similar to the Russell group in their selectivity and their earnings benefits, while increasing their distance from the former polytechnics. This suggests that the division among first‐tier universities, second‐tier universities (the former polytechnics) and FE colleges is correct.

2. For example, England has sometimes looked to secondary vocational education in the US as a model; TECs came from US PICs (private industry councils); foundation degrees were modelled on associate degrees.

3. There is one exception: the elite, private, liberal art colleges like Amherst and Swarthmore have their own conception of excellence that is quite different from the research university. However, these institutions enrol a very small proportion of students, and there are virtually no examples of them with Governmental support.

4. In several countries including Australia, the US and Finland there are discussions of a new stage between adolescence and adulthood, when individuals have greater independence from their families of origin because of employment but have not yet finished their education and found ‘adult’ jobs.

5. Community colleges become expert at calculating the marginal costs and the marginal revenues—tuition plus state revenues—of different programs. They are likely to expand programs where marginal costs are low (because of large classes, or teaching by adjunct faculty) and limit programs whose marginal costs are high including many health and technical programs, or classes were enrolments are relatively low leading to high marginal costs. These decisions are rational from the institution's perspective, but they may not be rational from the perspective of the state, students, employers or a global cost‐benefit sense.

6. A similar argument has been made for elementary–secondary schools by Carnoy et al. (2003).

7. The British Government lacks any underlying theory of qualifications, and so its qualifications are often ineffective. See Grubb (2004) on this issue and more broadly on the incompetence of English policy‐making; see Trow (2004) for an even more scathing indictment of higher education policy.

8. In Australia's Higher Education Contribution Scheme (HECS), loans are repaid out of adult income as students move into employment and their earnings rise. This is a mechanism of paying for tertiary education out of the economic benefits it generates.

9. This conclusion depends on arguments made at greater length in Grubb and Lazerson (2004) and Grubb (2004).

10. In the US, community colleges often provide customized training for the specific needs of particular employers. These are usually forms of upgrade training, and no one has suggested that such narrow forms are appropriate for pre‐employment preparation.