Contests for Professional Status: Community College Faculty in Sociology

Abstract

Community colleges are playing an increasingly important and visible role in higher education in the United States. However, the additional attention to community colleges has not produced the same degree of recognition regarding the importance and needs of the faculty within those institutions, who make up about 27 percent of all faculty members nation-wide. This article examines factors influencing the professional status of community college faculty. We argue that understanding the position of community college faculty in higher education today depends upon understanding that professional status is a dynamic and contested terrain, rather than a series of static characteristics. Following Abbott’s (1998) analysis of the efforts of librarians to achieve professional status, we consider how the changing structure of higher education in the United States may impact community college faculty as professionals, both positively and negatively. As one example of community college faculty raising their issues within a discipline-wide professional organization, we examine the current state of community college faculty with the American Sociological Association (ASA). We consider potential status changes for community college faculty in sociology within the context of the broad threats to the professional status of faculty across the higher education landscape. Paradoxically, these threats might result in an opening for efforts by community college faculty to improve their professional status, perhaps in coalition with faculty in other sectors of higher education.