Commuter Colleges are Different

Posted On Jun 30, 2020 By admin With Comments Off

Blog: Confessions of a Community College Dean

A loyal book direct me a heads-up about the June 4th Senate committee hearing on “Going Back to College Safely.” Witnesses scheduled to testify include Mitch Daniels, from Purdue; Christina Paxon, from Brown; Logan Hampton, from Lane College; and Georges Benjamin, from the American Public Health Association.

Notably missing is anyone from a community college, or even a commuter college.

That problems for reasons beyond the usual. The issues that commuter campuses face are basically different.

At the most basic level, our students leave campus every night, going to homes( or cars, sadly) all over Monmouth and neighboring counties. In many cases, they share those dwellings with people who work in other manufactures solely. Some of those people are older, some are immuno-compromised, and some are children.

My own college, like the majority of community colleges in all regions of the country, doesn’t have dormitories.( Among the community colleges that do have dormitories, as far as I know, in most cases the dorms house only minority communities of the student torso .) We don’t have the option, as some of the tonier universities do, of telling students not to leave campus for months at a time. They leave every night.

At one position, that compiles subjects simpler; not having dorms planneds not having to manage dorms. But the committee is also signifies it’s much harder to control exposure. My own college, for instance, has over 11,000 students in credit-bearing courses, plus thousands more in numerous non-credit trends( personnel increase, adult basic education, and the like ). Some attend full-time, but most attend part-time while also toiling paid positions. A student who shows up “clean” on Monday for a morning class might return asymptomatic on Tuesday, having driven a shift Monday evening, or having picked it up at home from someone they live with who got it at work.

Over the past few years, as student basic needs have accumulated more attention, we’ve worked with the local public transportation authority to see the bus planned more was in keeping with the class planned. For all of its virtues, though, public transportation wasn’t built for social distancing. It manipulates by capture economies of scale, which is another way of saying density. Density and distancing are at odds.

We too have programs for which physical distancing is an awkward fit, like automotive tech or culinary. The Brown Universities of the world may not have to face those issues, but countless community colleges do. It’s part of the mission.

Luckily, “were having” some advantages. Community colleges have been teaching online for a long time. My own already had various full measure curricula entirely online even before the pandemic slam, along with a robust teaching and learning midst staffed with instructional designers.( A gigantic shout-out to them, btw, for their work over the last couple of months !) Many professors who had various onsite class in the spring also had at least one online one, or had schooled online before, so they had a base of suffer in order to be allowed to rely. Unlike, say, Purdue, we never went the OPM route; our online department are also our onsite department. That mattered when we had to make a mid-semester swivel. I hope we don’t have to do that again — earnestly — but if we do, I know we have people capable of forming it work.

Our greatest challenge, as opposed to Brown’s, is funding. It is helpful in merely to have someone in the area at a hearing to explain that the usual “supplement, don’t supplant” rule for federal fund would be counterproductive during a pandemic. We’ve had our operating subsidize eviscerated; we need to be able to replace it immediately. As I outlined in this column last week, rescinded regime aid is properly understood as a cost directly related to the pandemic. But the kinfolks likeliest to know that aren’t scheduled to be in the room.

There’s no shortfall of capable people available to speak on behalf of community colleges.

No disrespect to Purdue, Brown, or Lane College; each is terrific in its own way. Community colleges are excellent in their own way, more; they should be heard from. Treating a passenger college as if it had dorms isn’t likely to end well.

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