Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Community colleges not preparing California's future workforce, study says - latimes.com

Community colleges not preparing California's future workforce, study says - latimes.com


When you begin to compare the California Higher Education system with say Vietnam's or Cambodia's or even Thailand's, there are obvious differences.

At a lecture in Vietnam, it was noted that only about 30% of the high school graduates get into a college.  You have to score a certain score to get into college, period.  There is a form of pre-screening of students in Asia.  This is why their graduation rates are very high.  In the USA, you can crawl out of high school and enroll into a community college if you were a major pot head, screw up or even undocumented but also without an adequate education from the home country.  What the study doesn't account is that we have an open access system.  We may not be getting the best student, immediately.  The pass rate then isn't surprising.

You could improve the pass rate if you insert a Vietnamese style system.   In fact, their JCs are still closed in terms of access.  You have to score a certain percentage in order to be accepted.  This sort of violates the spirit of the grand educational plan that was the cornerstone of California public higher education system.  In many ways, our system is more open than many of the educational systems in Asia.

The graduation rate in our system is a challenge, that universities in Asia do not face.  In this sense, I think we have to be more innovative in terms of instruction than others.