Last week, when I wrote about frustration and disappointment connected to one’s expectations, one example in my mind was how professors often think about students.  I don’t want to get too much into all the ends and outs, but I as I was writing, I started thinking about something that has been on my mind for at least six months.   For that time, what has been rolling around is this idea: the world has completely changed and as such, the entire experience of higher education has changed.

 

Of course, I’m not the first to talk about this.  In fact, for about 4-5 years, it’s been written about in connection to things like MOOCs or Financial Aid.  If you want some really deep and good writings, then read Andrew Delbanco’s College: What it was, is and should be or Jeffrey Slingo’s College Unbound: The Future of Higher Education and What It Means for Students.    These and other experts are already digging into the shifting landscape.

 

But, as the past few years have come along, I have believed that the changes at the community college level are equally as deep. If you go back in time to the birth of the community college system, what you’ll see is that the overriding reason for these schools was access.  Coming out of World War II, our national problem was access for college-ready students who simply lacked the access due to the limited or exclusive nature of the four-year schools at that time.  Generally speaking, the majority  of students in community colleges were college ready, but had no access.  There just weren’t enough seats (and the four years school had a high level of exclusivity).

 

Of course, back then, there wasn’t a huge focus on college readiness per se;  there certainly weren’t “college ready tests” like the PERT.  There weren’t remedial classes…though, in my mind, that was as much because only college ready kids came.  That has all changed.  Now, at community colleges across the nation, it’s all flipped.  At Valencia, I would suggest that we have about 70% of our incoming students are not college ready….maybe even higher.

 

Now this gets into a huge debate that I won’t entertain here.  Who should be coming “to college”?  What IS “college”?  What should it be?  Is calling technical degrees and certificates that lead to jobs improved or worsened by calling them “college”?

 

No, my point here is simple.  What I do in my class must be different if my student population is 70% non-college ready.  Note, I am NOT saying that those kids are “dumb” or “stupid” or “have no business being in college.”  However, they are in my class without the basic tools that I, back in September 1982, easily had when I walked into my first college class, an introduction to Philosophy and Logic.  I wasn’t from a special school.  I didn’t grow up in a rich town.  I went to a county high school with regular kids taught by regular teachers.  But they pushed us….all of us.  There were core things such as attendance, taking notes, writing, understanding a basic research process, using the library and so forth.  By the time 12th grade ended, I didn’t need anyone to teach me that doing preparation for class, whether reading the book, researching some question or doing homework math questions, was really important

 

Back to expectations and disappointment….I can choose to just blast and blame today’s student or the K-12 system or families or our culture for seeing so many students who are not college ready.  Or, I can change my expectation and instead construct my teaching of History to help them learn how to become college ready….or at least more so than when they walked in.  I can give you scores of former students who will testify to the usefulness of what I do in the class….and only a few of them actually went on to study History.  No, they will testify that I helped them learn how to succeed in life and in college.

 

My students have changed.  That’s a promise.  Compared to my first classes at Valencia in 2002, the difference is stark.  I can lament that change.  I can try to figure out some solution or process for our K-12 system to try and make some changes.  I can attempt to help our culture learn to value once again key aspects of life success, things like what I write and speak about.  However, the kids I will see in my class in May aren’t aided by me showing up with a certain expectation and then being angry about how the students don’t meet up.  They won’t benefit from me belittling them or mocking their lack of understanding.

 

At least for my school, and I believe for community colleges across the country, this is our new student.  We can help them if we fix our expectation and shift what we do in class to meet their need.  Trust me, my class is hard and I don’t “dumb down” anything, but I realize they need me to help them gain the preparation that I received in school, starting back in the 6th grade when our country was a different place.

 

This is our new student.  I am eager to help.