Community Colleges in the Time of COVID

It is impossible to divorce issues related to teaching to learning in higher education from our underfunded system of K-12 public education. The K-12 school system is intended to socialize and educate our youth, but it also provides an unintended system of childcare. This unintended function of our K-12 system is a social problem in and of itself that isn’t unlike how an accidental function of industrial production is to pollute the environment. The “burden” of childcare isn’t the social problem, but how it distorts and subverts the intended function of education reflects the root of this social problem. Why does education also serve as childcare, and why does industrial production lead to pollution? It’s because there is an economic incentive to do so.

What is the intended purpose of the community college system? It provides affordable and accessible higher education. Whether that be for the purpose of getting sustainable jobs or expanding minds should be up to the discretion of students and faculty. Let’s set that idea aside because it’s a fraught one, I know. Focus on the intended function of being affordable and accessible, because we can all agree on that.

Then let’s focus on one accidental function because it reflects a systemic obstacle for expecting students to be able to complete courses online during the COVID19 pandemic. Community colleges also serve the accidental function of compensating for systemic flaws in K-12 education. Most relevant here is how we often provide rudimentary skills some students haven’t built yet. Some of our students arrive without skills in reading comprehension and writing, and across disciplines and courses, they are able to practice reading and writing. If a sense of curiosity about the world comes with that practice, then the student is much more likely to refine those rudimentary skills and truly expand their mind. But it starts with practice. It’s all a matter of practice.

Faculty in social and behavioral sciences aren’t supposed to be responsible for teaching students to read and write effectively, but we actually are, at least partly so.

To take online college courses, students must have basic skills in reading comprehension and writing. There is no avoiding this fact. During face-to-face classes, we’re able to discuss course material spontaneously and use class exercises to help students understand course readings and practice writing. This is virtually impossible in online courses. (Pun intended.)

That seems to be the intrinsic problem with online learning in college. For those of us in the trenches of open-access education, efforts to address the “digital divide,” as noble and important as they are, won’t even touch this systemic problem.