Arthur M. Cohen’s Publications

Abstract

Arthur M. Cohen's publications over a 40-year period, many coauthored with Florence B. Brawer, reflect his continual efforts to describe American community college accurately. This Festschrift concludes with a bibliography of Professor Cohen's prominent works, including books, journal articles, and essays in edited volumes.To publish a manuscript, as Arthur Cohen tells his students, is to make it public. It is through publication that scholars make their insights available to scrutiny of others. This scrutiny, in turn, leads to correction of error and uncovers promising avenues for further investigation. A scholar's publication record represents his or her contribution to an ongoing public dialogue about world we live in.Professor Cohen's publications, many coauthored with Florence B. Brawer, have made substantial contributions to our understanding of community college education. All embody an attempt to depict community colleges accurately so that discussions about their further development might be based on a clear-eyed view of their curricula, instructional modes used in teaching, characteristics and experiences of students, administrative structures and revenue streams that support colleges' operations, and other important aspects of institution. Writing in 1980, Cohen characterized his work as criticism, which he defined as the art of accurate identification. He noted that thecritic of community colleges attempts to identify them accurately. What are they of themselves? Institutions of learning? Agents of social mobility? Participants in welfare system? Purveyors of dreams? Contributors to community development? He [the critic] compares them with other educational structures. What is their niche? What do they offer that is not provided by other schools? How do their operations differ?1Pursuing this constructive criticism for more than 40 years, Cohen has produced a body of literature that offers highly informed interpretations of what community colleges are and what they are capable of becoming. Most of these publications, which draw heavily on documents collected by ERIC Clearinghouse for Community Colleges and research conducted by Center for Study of Community Colleges, are noted below in two listings. The first includes citations to books that Cohen has authored or edited. Clearly, most notable of these books are four editions of The American Community College, coauthored with Florence Brawer. The second listing includes citations to journal articles or essays in edited volumes. Both listings organize citations chronologically, starting with most recent and working back through time.This is a selected bibliography, because it does not include Professor Cohen's conference papers or research reports he produced for Center for Study of Community Colleges. True to his insistence that scholarly products be available and open to public, all these papers and reports were entered into ERIC database and can be obtained at libraries with ERIC microfiche collections. What follows, though, represents most prominent of a prominent scholar's writings.[Footnote]Note1. Cohen, A. M. (1980). Dateline '79 revisited. In G. B. Vaughan (Ed.), Questioning community college role (New Directions for Community Colleges No. 32, pp. 33-42, at 33). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.[Reference]Books and MonographsCohen, A. M., & Brawer, F. B. (2003). The American community college (4th ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Cohen, A. M. (1998). The shaping of American higher education: Emergence and growth of contemporary system. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Cohen, A. M., & Brawer, F. B. (1996). The American community college (3rd ed.). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.Cohen, A. M. (Ed.). (1994). Relating curriculum and transfer (New Directions for Community Colleges No. …