Discussion Item: Change of Name

Uncategorized

At the 2014 Convention, the executive committee for the Discussion Group on the Two Year College will discuss, among other things, the changing of our name from Two Year College to Community College. To help us with such a discussion, we welcome your feedback in the comments section.

About Stacey Lee Donohue

I am Professor of English at Central Oregon Community College in Bend, Oregon. I've been a Department Chair (for two different departments), and for the 2015-16 academic year I will be an Interim Instructional Dean overseeing 4 departments (Humanities; Fine Arts and Communications; Social Sciences; and World Languages and Cultures). I also serve on the Executive Committees of the Association of Departments of English and the Two Year College Discussion Group (soon to be called the Community College Forum). My interest in the K-16 Alliance stems from my work as a faculty mentor and department chair working with high school instructors teaching dual enrollment courses (that count for both high school and college credit) in the high schools that serve a very large geographic region known as Central Oregon. Last year, our region was awarded a significant state grant for our "Cascades Commitment" project, which includes developing alternative certification and professional development pathways for high school teachers teaching college level composition courses in the high schools.

12 thoughts on “Discussion Item: Change of Name”

  1. I think Community College is more accurate than “two-year college” if only because many community college students attend longer than two years. Added to that is all the resonance of the word “community” which is, I think, very important when we consider the significance of these schools to the communities surrounding them.

  2. I agree with you Martha, it should be “Community College,” and I appreciate your reasoning. We are losing out sense of community in this country too quickly as it is. We should not assist in that loss; we should do all we can to strengthen the cause of community.

    Not to be too “elitist,” but it also is something we can say that for-profits cannot.

    I vote “Yea.”

    ~ Peter R Jacoby
    Professor of English
    San Diego Mesa College
    (One of the campuses of the San Diego Community College District)
    San Diego, CA

  3. And I agree with all of you for the same reasons: “two-year” is no longer an accurate designation for many of our students, and “community” emphasizes the varied and local nature of our work.

  5. OH shit, you are changing it from two-year TO community college, for some reason I read it the other way. YES to the change, and you can delete my other comment!!

    1. Yes, for some reason, it’s been Two Year College for years. Yet, the MLA Committee on Community Colleges uses “community colleges”: perhaps there was a desire for a distinction, but “two year” is simply not an accurate name. Thanks for the support, Margaret, and everyone else! Tho would love to hear arguments for keeping “Two Year” if there area any?

  6. The “two-year college” designation emphasizes more specifically than “community college” that these institutions offer the beginning years of higher education, in some ways separate from, and in other ways on a continuum with, the additional years needed to complete a bachelor’s degree; that these “two-year” institutions have issues of their own, and that the transition from the one institution to the other also has its issues. I don’t know how many private two-year colleges remain, or what their enrollment might be. Surely the public community colleges predominate in this area of education. This being said, I think the “community college” designation is preferable, for all the reasons others have cited. Yay community!

  7. Yes, “community” has a better ring to it and it is better than “junior” college.

  9. Does anyone know the history of the several terms or names–two-year colleges, community colleges, Associate’s Colleges? That last is the term used in the Carnegie Classification. Am I right in recollecting that, in the State of California, the public community or two-year colleges were “community colleges” in the sense that they used to be part of local school districts rather than of the State higher education system? Or maybe that has nothing to do with why one term or the other was or is used?

    The MLA’s Committee on Community College was initially charged in 1997 as the Committee on Two-Year Colleges. In one of the committee’s first acts, it asked for its name to be changed to the Committee on Community Colleges, which it became in 1998.

  10. David
    From what I have heard from CC faculty in California, the term that is often still used in the state is “Junior” College—and the history is that their function was to provide the first two years of a 4 year degree. However, it doesn’t take into account that community colleges have multiple missions. Plus, I find that name condescending, personally.

    I have never heard/read that the name is tied to where the community colleges are housed politically (in K-12 or with Higher Ed). To me, “community” college is a name that recognizes the multiple missions of such colleges, including missions that serve that particular community (thus offering forestry certificates and majors in communities surrounded by forests). For example, the missions of COCC are: Transfer/Articulation; Basic Skills; Lifelong Learning; Workforce Development. “Junior” only refers to the first mission.

    “Associate’s Colleges” sounds like an administrative name, and it’s also no longer accurate since there are community colleges that offer BA/BS degrees now.

    Since relatively few community college students finish in two years, the “Two Year College” Discussion Group name is also long overdue to be changed to Community College (at least 15 years overdue;-)

    Thanks for that historical tidbit, David.

    Stacey

Comments are closed.