Intersecting Place, Purpose, and Practice: A Community College Context

Abstract

Community colleges play a critical role in the attainment of higher education for first-generation college students from diverse social, cultural, and language backgrounds (Moore & Shulock, 2014; Shaw, Rhoads, & Valadez, 1999). Minority undergraduate enrollment has increased 146 percent since the early 1980s, reflecting a demographic shift of Latino/a students as the largest minority (Flores & Park, 2013, p. 115). Community colleges serve those students facing “the most significant barriers to higher education” (Olsen, 2003) and are “essential for reducing racial/ethnic disparities in educational attainment” (Sengupta & Jepsen, 2006, p. 12). In their classic community college study, Brint and Karabel (1989) argue that “Despite their self-characterization as ‘people’s colleges’, two-year institutions have throughout their history been less likely to send on to four-year institutions their less socially and culturally advantaged students” (p. 229). Some twenty-five years later, this disparity must be addressed; the rhetoric of educating all students must become a reality for students from diverse backgrounds.