Gateway to Opportunity?: A History of the Community College in the United States

Gateway to Opportunity?: A History of the Community College in the United States by Beach, J. M.. paperback edition. ISBN: 9781579224523.

"A strength of this book is Beach’s focus on the community college as an evolving social institution, a perspective not common in previous literature. Another strength is Beach’s focus on the dilemmas faced by community colleges as presented from the perspectives of faculty, administrators, state officials, local communities, and students."―NACADA Journal “As the federal government seeks to expand funding for the nation’s community colleges, policymakers would do well to take seriously the well-documented and somewhat disturbing findings in J. M. Beach’s Gateway to Opportunity? This book not only raises important questions about the educational practices and effectiveness of community colleges historically, it also provides detailed analyses and case studies that should inform policy debates and decision-making in the twenty-first century. Educators, researchers, administrators, and government officials concerned about the future of community colleges, and U.S. higher education in general, cannot afford to ignore J. M. Beach’s findings and conclusions”―V.P. Franklin, University of California Presidential Chair, Distinguished Professor of History and Education, University of California, Riverside “This book paves new ground for re-envisioning the community college and the larger educational system of which it is such a critically important element.”―Robert Rhoads, professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change at UCLA. Community colleges hold immense promise if they can overcome their historical legacy and be re-institutionalized with unified missions, clear goals of educational success, and adequate financial resources. This book presents the history in all its complexity so that policy makers and practitioners might better understand the constraints of the past in an effort to realize the possibilities of the future.