Neoliberal Ideology in Community College Mission Statements: A Critical Discourse Analysis

This critical discourse analysis focuses on neoliberal discursive representations of the community college mission. The community college's role in reproducing social inequality is explained as a neoliberal discursive project in which meanings of education are reconstituted to secure the interests of the powerful. As such, the community college mission becomes defined in economic instead of democratic terms. The author calls for a counter-hegemonic discourse that represents the community college as an opportunity for emancipation.