In the United States, people think of elementary and secondary education as fundamentally different from higher education. The first two levels are where students are expected to learn the building blocks for lifelong learning, while college is meant to confer higher-order thinking and more-specialized skills. How students are treated flows…

One of the most remarkable developments in American education in the past half century has been the creation and rapid growth of the nation's community colleges. Built on the curricular pillars of vocational education, transfer programs, and community education, community colleges today are considered the "engines of statewide economic…

Describes Coastline Community College, California, a noncampus, community-based, comprehensive college, in terms of its: (1) use of existing community facilities; (2) administrative organization; (3) open admissions policies; (4) services to the elderly; (5) comprehensive curriculum; (6) telecourses and independent study courses; (7) primarily…

In 1992, Hudson County Community College (HCCC), in New Jersey, began a mission review process to expand from a limited, career-oriented institution to a comprehensive urban community college. Mission statements were reviewed from 67 comprehensive community colleges in 22 states and a questionnaire was devised to determine college staff and…

Revised general education (GE) curricula at two community colleges are described in an effort to illustrate the outcomes of a "telic" curriculum revision based on: (1) the collective identification of the purposes of GE by an institution's faculty, and (2) the design of a GE curriculum which reconciles those identified purposes with the…