Role of community colleges and other TVET institutions in advancing sustainable development by supporting access, diversity, and inclusion for nontraditional student populations

ABSTRACT

The Sustainable Development Goals link access to higher education, particularly for non-traditional populations, as a way to fight poverty and ensure prosperity. This article examines the experiences of several under-researched categories of non-traditional students who attend Community Colleges and Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Colleges in multiple jurisdictions worldwide. The article begins to fill in the gap with comparative data on how these institutions advance equity, diversity, and inclusion through access to higher education. The implications of Community Colleges and TVET are analyzed using the lens of Neo-Liberalism and the Capabilities Narrative. The study extends the scope of the inquiry into the contributions these institutions make to sustainable development. The article uses a comparative multi-case study approach to examine the Community Colleges and TVET Colleges in different jurisdictions worldwide.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

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Rosalind Latiner Raby

Rosalind Latiner Raby, Ph.D. is a Senior Lecturer at California State University, Northridge in the Educational Leadership and Policy Studies Department of the College of Education and is an affiliate faculty for the ELPS Ed.D. Community College program. She serves as the Director of California Colleges for International Education, a nonprofit consortium of California community colleges. She is also on the Academic Board of the Centre for Higher Education Internationalisation (CHEI), Universita Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milano. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Comparative and International Higher Education and Associate Editor of the Journal of Further and Higher Education. Dr. Raby received her Ph.D. in the field of Comparative and International Education from University of California at Los Angeles. Dr. Raby has been publishing in the field of community college internationalization since 1985. Her latest publications are Catalysts of Change: Entrepreneurial Problem-Solving for Unscripted Futures (AIEA White Paper, co-editor), Study abroad opportunities for community college students and strategies for global learning (IGI-Global, 2019, co-editor); Handbook on Comparative Issues of Community Colleges and Global Counterparts (Springer, 2018, co-editor) and International Education at Community Colleges: Themes, Practices, and Case Studies (Palgrave, 2016, co-editor).