Yeah, I agree with you that if it's an assumption that community college = low quality, that assumption is problematic.
I think the elephant in the room is that the gap between community college tuition and four year college tuition isn't justified by "higher quality" of the latter. I think that it's a bit like Levis jeans - you're paying a lot for the name, the material and the stitching isn't so different. In the case with which I'm most familiar - the University of Illinois - many of the classes that are taught to freshman and sophomores at community colleges by "adjuncts" are substantially taught at the U of I by teaching assistants. Nothing against teaching assistants - I was one, for many years - but to say that someone should pay much more to be taught by a teaching assistant rather than by adjunct faculty seems something of a bait-and-switch. Robert Naiman Policy Director Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org [email protected] On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 5:51 PM, raghu <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sat, Jan 10, 2015 at 4:32 PM, Robert Naiman <[email protected]> > wrote: > >> I think this raises legitimate concerns but I don't think the answer to >> those concerns is to oppose Obama's proposal outright. I think the answer >> is to insist that the standards for the program should be as good as the >> first two years at the flagship state university. >> > > > Isn't that sort of assumed? > > Take this quote from the article: "In my opinion, TN Promise is a perfect > example for taking money away from high quality education (UofM, in this > case), and use the extra funds to invest in low quality education > (community colleges)." > > It screams elitism to me to equate "community college" with "low quality". > I mean what is the basis for this judgment? The article does say that > community colleges use a higher proportion of adjunct teachers, but while > there are lots of things wrong with relying on adjunct labor, are we really > arguing here that adjunct teachers = inferior education? > > Now I can understand someone from say, Harvard, making this kind of > argument, but the University of Memphis?? > -raghu. > > > > >
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