Wednesday, October 8, 2014

"This developmental algebra is a stainless-steel wall and there’s no way up it, around it or under it."

The hallways of LaGuardia Community College are crowded with
 students in the mornings. Credit: Jake Naughton for The New York Times.
In the New York Times, a sobering portrait of a community college and one of its typical students.
...As a community college student, Mr. de Jesus is both prototype and outlier. The majority of community college students come from low-income families, and many arrive at school, as he did, with competing obligations (29 percent of community college students in the United States are parents), as well as the need for extensive remediation. The widely held impression that community colleges are essentially vocational is inaccurate. Data released by the American Association of Community Colleges in September indicated that most of the associate degrees awarded in 2012 were given in the liberal arts and sciences, outnumbering those for nursing, say, or marketing.
In recent years, mounting concerns about inequality have fixated on the need for greater economic diversity at elite colleges, but the interest has tended to obscure the fact that the vast majority of high school students — including the wealthiest — will never go to Stanford or the University of Chicago or Yale. Even if each of U.S. News and World Report’s 25 top-ranked universities committed to turning over all of its spots to poor students, the effort would serve fewer than 218,000 of them. Community colleges have 7.7 million students enrolled, 45 percent of all undergraduates in the country....
To read the rest: Community College Students Face a Very Long Road to Graduation.

Check out the video too.

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5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The war on poverty has failed. Foriegn cultures and not interested in assimilating into American society. Like Indonesia we have become a pluralistic society. (Carnivale) This Democratic ideal of multiculturism with cross-cutting cleavages is indeed an anomaly. Ah, when in Rome, do as the Romans do... NOT!

Anonymous said...

This student was Puerto Rican, and he is an American citizen as were his parents and probably his grandparents. What are you even talking about?

Anonymous said...

George...

Anonymous said...

4:32, how do you know that? Regardless, pluralism exists within our society even with first, second, and third generation American "citizens." Citizenship does not mean folks will assimilate. Why should they when they know they can get away with pressuring society into eventually catering to them? A good example is how publications at the Westminster DMV are written in 15 languages. Another one, probably the biggest, is how K-12 teachers need to be able to teach in both English and Spanish even though we are an English speaking nation. Next they'll pile-on Farsi, Arabic and Chinese!

Anonymous said...

3:01 - I know because I read the article. I'm not arguing that pluralism doesn't exist. I was simply noting that you were responding and making assumptions about an article you clearly didn't even read. I'm not really sure what culture you think people (citizens? Non-citizens? Non-whites?immigrants?) should assimilate into. When has there ever been a monolithic American culture? What culture do you think a Puerto Rican community college student needs to adopt? What in the world is American culture if it isn't a history of cultural pluralism and that pluralism has also always been characteristically different in various regions?

Roy's obituary in LA Times and Register: "we were lucky to have you while we did"

  This ran in the Sunday December 24, 2023 edition of the Los Angeles Times and the Orange County Register : July 14, 1955 - November 20, 2...