This is a book by a rather cynical and dispirited journalist who
found work as a community college teacher and reports on the
various aspects of the job. I've been an instructor at the college
level since 1996 (I teach Physics and Astronomy at TCU), so this is
pretty familiar turf for me, although I will be the first to argue that
teaching at a school with "open admissions" is substantially
different from one like TCU, which tends to recruit students from
the upper 10-20% of their high school classes. It starts with the
students, most of whom are amazingly unmotivated. I've run into
many such students, but they are thankfully a slim minority for
me and I suffer no repercussions for giving them the "F" they
deserve. But at this community college, where the revenue comes
largely from tuition (and an enrollment subject to supply/demand
pressures instead of the controllable situation at a University),
flunking students out means significant lost revenue, so there
is a very large and very dangerous pressure to pass students no
matter what.
This makes all the difference in the world, since the students,
knowing that they have pretty much all the power as "customers",
get to dictate course content, workload and faculty behavior. The
result is a course curriculum that most advanced junior high
students would not be challenged by. Students blow off assignments
routinely, don't bother attending class and generally ratchet their
effort down, always testing for the minimum possible effort needed
to pass the class. Who wouldn't be cynical, teaching in such a
situation? What's more is that any effort to counteract this and
force students to be accountable results in poor evaluations and
denial of tenure. Surprise, the result is massive grade inflation.
And this from a journalism teacher. Can you imagine the experience
faced by a mathematician trying to teach calculus? It leaves me
wondering just how pervasive this problem is in community
colleges.