Introduction

Abstract

Our intent in Community Colleges and Their Students: Co-construction and Organizational Identity is to deepen understandings about community colleges and promote new directions for their study. We explain the cultural aspects, social structures, and personal dynamics that develop when college personnel and students interact with one another as part of their efforts to construct students’ educational experiences and college life in general. Our work attempts to uncover who the participants are, how they interact with one another within a specific context, and what the implications are for students in their college experiences and future development. The analysis we present begins with and moves beyond our previous publication—Nontraditional Students and Community Colleges: The Conflict of Justice and Neoliberalism. In the current book, we represent not just the struggles of disadvantaged student populations but also the conditions that give rise to their college experiences and the ways in which these students, along with college officials, shape academic structures in community colleges. We do not view student attainment in the form of grades, retention, credentials, transfer, or job placement. Instead, we highlight the development of students as active social actors—both as recipients of education and as contributors to institutional actions. Students in community colleges, particularly adult students, are not empty vessels; they bring a life to the community college and they have a life outside the community college.KeywordsCommunity CollegeEducational ExperienceOrganizational IdentityCollege ExperienceCollege LifeThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.