Book Review: The Community College in the Twenty-First Century: A Systems Approach

Abstract

Community College in the Twenty-First Century: A Systems Approach by Michael Scott Cain. University Press of America, Lanham, Maryland. 1999, 168 pages, $32.00, Cloth, ISBN 0-76181357-8. Reviewed by Clifford P. Harbour In Community College in the Twenty-First Century: A Systems Approach, Michael Scott Cain argues that community colleges must clarify their mission and move beyond their recent descent into and (p. 9). author maintains that this can be best accomplished through systematic analysis of public two-year institutions. For Cain, systematic analysis is holistic and views community colleges as more than the sum of discrete organizational units or individuals (p. 13). By recognizing the importance of systematic concepts like intra-organizational communication and its role in altering perceptions and relationships, Cain holds that community colleges can revise their mission and move beyond the confusion that he sees as endemic (pp. 25-26). Cain's description of systematic analysis is informative and interesting (pp. 9-26). But, his discussion of how this approach may be implemented is inconsistent with his description of the paradigm. For example, after describing systematic analysis and its emphasis on concepts like communication, organizational preference for homeostasis, and change through morphogenesis (pp. 13-15), Cain turns to examine some of the traditional groups in community colleges-faculty, students, and campus leaders (p. 41-91). In short, the author's discussion of systematic theory is based on the same discrete organizational units and individuals that he wanted to transcend at the outset. To be sure, the author discusses the community college as system in commenting on faculty, students, and campus leaders. He fails, however, to emphasize concepts like communication, organizational preference for homeostasis, and change through morphogenesis. After Cain promises thick notion of systems analysis in Chapter 2, subsequent chapters reveal only thin application of the theory to community colleges. In the end, systems theory adds little to the book. Despite this shortcoming, students of the community college will find Cain's discussion of the institution provocative and engaging. author's title for Chapter 1 is The Walmart of Higher Education, and it is here that he marks out the central theme of the book. Cain states that a major strength of the community college, then, has been its to discover and serve what Walmart would call new markets. Ironically, its major weakness emanates from that same ability (p. 7). At the end of the chapter the author clarifies this point and states, just as growing number of people are returning to the strip shops because Walmart has gotten too big and noisy and confusing, so are number of people expressing dissatisfaction with the community college because it has overextended itself. It has lost its direction by spreading itself too thin. By trying to appeal to the entire population, it has wound up satisfying no one. (p. 8) In Chapter 3 Cain explains how, in his view, community colleges have come to this point. He observes that the twentieth century has seen continuing expansion in the mission of public two-year colleges (pp. 2739). Although these institutions were initially designed to provide the first two years of baccalaureate instruction, they gradually expanded their mission to include new responsibilities such as technical or vocational training and developmental education. Simultaneously, two-year institutions accommodated increasing enrollments by White males, women, and minorities. After chronicling the expansion of the community college mission, Cain argues that the current confusion and ambiguity has had negative impact on faculty, students, and administrators. In Cain's view, there are three separate and distinct faculties at community colleges: academic, vocational, and adjunct (p. …