The Community College Baccalaureate: Emerging Trends and Policy Issues (review)

Over the last decade, many community colleges have begun to offer bachelors' degrees. A few stirrings in the 1980s were followed by acceleration in the late 1990s signaled by the founding of the Community College Baccalaureate Association in 1997. The trajectory of the movement in Canada is similar, with perhaps a slightly earlier start.

This edited volume has several objectives. It describes the history of this controversial movement in the United States in a chapter by Kenneth Walker, the president and founder of the Community College Baccalaureate Association, and in Canada by Michael Skolnik and another chapter by Berta Vigil Laden. Deborah Floyd provides an overview of the movement and defines various models. Thomas Furlong, John McKee, and Jon and Nancy Remington describe the development and characteristics of the CCB at St. Petersburg College in Florida, Westmark College in Arkansas, and Great Basin College in Nevada. A chapter by Albert Lorenzo describes the university center model in which the university conducts classes on community college campuses but maintains control over the B.A. Barbara Townsend presents a skeptical view of the movement, although other chapters also raise questions. Each chapter ends with a useful list of policy and research questions.

In their concluding chapter, Floyd and Skolnik suggest that there are two broad arguments for the CCB. The first is increased access to the B.A. for students with limited B.A. opportunities due to location, finances, or learning styles. This access is particularly important because students are increasingly interested in earning a B.A. since it is more and more important in the labor market. The CCB might also be less expensive for both the student and the taxpayer. Floyd's overview chapter puts particular emphasis on geographic access, arguing that place-bound students should not be blocked from obtaining a B.A. simply because life circumstances prevent them from moving to a location where they could attend a B.A.-granting institution.

A second argument for the CCB is that community colleges will provide a different type of post-secondary instruction that combines a more hands-on education with academic study. In addition to this pedagogic issue, the authors also emphasize providing education in fields where traditional four-year colleges are unable or unwilling to provide adequate capacity; nursing and teacher education are prominent examples.

The skeptical perspective, presented in Townsend's chapter, but appearing in other chapters as well, suggests that, once they start conferring B.A.'s, community colleges will begin to shift resources away from their traditional access mission, neglecting developmental education and transfer. Or as Skolnik asks, can the college maintain its traditional mission or will the B.A. "unleash forces that will reshape the college in the image of the university" (p. 66). Skeptics also question whether the CCB will be accepted by graduate schools or employers equivalent to a B.A. granted by a traditional baccalaureate college or university.

This book does an excellent job of raising the issues and outlining the controversy, but what does it do to resolve the debate? The St. Petersburg case suggests that the college has found a partnership and division of labor between it and the University of Southern Florida that could preserve the distinction between the CCB and the B.A. But overall, evidence presented in the book does suggest that, once community colleges start granting B.A.'s they will begin to take on the characteristics of traditional colleges. Westmark College was founded in 1928 as a two-year college, began offering B.A.'s in 1997, and became the University of Arkansas at Fort Smith in 2002. Unfortunately, the chapter on Westmark does not discuss or comment on this transformation.

Lorenzo points out that while community colleges argue for the right to grant "applied" B.A.'s, distinct from academic B.A.'s, many of the CCBs have indeed been in traditional liberal arts...