Globalizing the Community College : Strategies for Change in the Twenty-First Century

Long regarded as purely a local institution, the community college has become globalized. Two year schools have been affected by economic, cultural, and technological effects of globalization. This book traces the experience of seven community colleges as they engineered organizational change to respond to globalization. This book discusses the effects of globalization on community colleges, and the organizational responses to globalization. The author looks at seven community colleges that have undergone organizational change in response to globalization. For each college, he examines the effects of globalization in three areas: the economic domain, the cultural domain, and the information domain. Overall, organizational culture was altered at the institutions: the general support for information technologies and their increasing use were evidence of at least a tacit agreement between labor and management to accept management's goals of greater efficiency and rising productivity. In the domain of politics, government policies endeavored to direct community colleges toward economic goals, emphasizing workforce training and state economic competitiveness as outcomes, compelling colleges to improve efficiencies and to become accountable to government and responsive to business and industry. The book also offers a discussion of the process of globalization in all seven of the case study institutions. Community colleges did not eradicate behavioral patterns associated with the preservation of institutional identity, the accommodation of growth, the emphasis upon a comprehensive curriculum, and other traditional patterns. (JA) This book explores the relations between music, people, and places through the analysis of Bolivian music performances: by a non-governmental organization involved in musical activities, by an urban music performing ensemble, and by the indigenous people living in two rural areas of Potosi. The book frames debates of Bolivian national and indigenous identities in terms of contrasting attitudes people assume toward cultural and artistic authenticity, and the power relations that shape these differences. This multi-sited ethnography examines the contemporary privileging of indigenous authenticity in the pluricultural Bolivian context, and within a globalized political economy of cultural difference. The book makes unique contributions through an emphasis on music as sensory experience, an examination of the ideologies behind competing claims to authenticity, a combined focus on different kinds of Bolivian music (indigenous, popular, avant-garde), and an interpretation of local, national, and transnational fieldwork experiences Long regarded as a local institution, the community college has become a globalized institution. It has been affected by global forces, and by the interpretations of organizational members to both global forces and to the responses of intermediaries. Globalization as a process finds an outlet within the community college where economic, cultural, and technological behaviors are advanced along lines consistent with and supportive of globalization. Furthermore, government actions have directed community colleges to respond and adapt to a global economy. In this book, seven community colleges are examined to demonstrate organizational change in the 1990s precipitated by globalization. Given the pervasive influence of distance education and the wired quality of the classroom, the community college has become more important as a satellite institution that connects learners, and is no longer purely a local institution The book contains eight chapters and an appendix that describes the research underlying the discussion. John S. Levin. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [229]-248) And Index.