Community Colleges Take On Global Challenges

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By BETH MCMURTRIE

Philadelphia

Community colleges in the United States are increasingly seen as a model by developing countries looking to train a skilled work force, even as the institutions wrestle with what it means to educate globally competent students, said speakers at the American Association of Community Colleges' annual meeting here this month.

China in particular is eager to tap into the work-force-training expertise of American community colleges. The Beijing government considers its vocational-training system ineffective and outdated, said Patricia Hsieh, president of San Diego Miramar College, who took part in a trip to China last year organized by the association.

"There's a disconnect between what they learn at vocational and technical colleges and what that market needs," she said of Chinese students. "That's where we come in."

Sufei Li, who is U.S. program coordinator for the China Education Association for International Exchange, a nongovernmental organization with ties to the Chinese Ministry of Education, said her group was working with the community-college association and the Chinese government to bring 500 senior administrators from some of China's 1,100 vocational and technical colleges to a "shadowing program" at community colleges in the United States over the next five years.

The educators are interested in learning about a number of aspects of the American community-college system, including curricular reform, building relationships with industry, and faculty training.

At a session on higher education in India, a different picture emerged. While its vocational-education system seems as dysfunctional as China's, the main push for change has come not from the government itself, but from a government-appointed National Knowledge Commission. It has issued scathing critiques of the higher-education system, calling it stifled, outmoded, and focused on memorization rather than understanding. But panelists warned against attempting to get involved with India's higher-education bureaucracy.

"If you think we have it bad in this country, you haven't seen the quagmire of regulation that is in India," said Robert Keener, international-education coordinator at Sinclair Community College, in Ohio, who participated in a trip to India last year sponsored by the association and by Community Colleges for International Development.

Mr. Keener and others who have worked in India recommended building relationships with private community colleges there, both proprietary and nonprofit, which often do the most innovative work.

At a session on providing a global education for students, panelists talked about both the pragmatic and the philosophical.

Diana Van Der Ploeg, president of Butte College, in California, noted that global-education efforts at her institution get tossed out the window whenever the state passes through one of its repeated budget crises. So among her first tasks as president was to put that commitment into the college's master plan. Then she hired the staff necessary to support it. Today, she said, the curriculum committee won't approve any new course if it doesn't have an international component.

Money helps, too. Carolyn Williams, president of Bronx Community College, said that when she became president, she set aside $50,000 in a loosely structured fund to support international activities among faculty members. That quickly sent the message that she was serious about internationalizing the campus.

William E. Christopher, president of Cascadia Community College, in Washington State, said colleges should be creative about tapping into external support. Foundations, the U.S. Departments of Education and Commerce, trade councils, and cultural associations often have the money and expertise to help build international links.