There are “fewer public intellectuals on college campuses” than in the past, opined New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.
“Exactly the opposite is true,” responds Rob Jenkins, an associate professor of English at Georgia Perimeter College and a Chronicle of Higher Education blogger. With the rise of social media and blogging, “more professors than ever are adding their voices” to public debates. But there’s one exception: Community college professors rarely speak out on public issues.
Many are busy teaching, but there’s more to it than that, Jenkins writes. They’re afraid.
Many two-year campuses are run more like high schools than colleges, with a chain of command, little in the way of true shared governance, and strict division of duties. Much like school principals, some community-college presidents believe it is their role, and theirs alone, to speak out on issues of concern. Anyone else who does so is risking his or her future on that campus.
While most faculty members don’t care if a colleague speaks out, a few will be hostile to anyone with “a public persona,” writes Jenkins. And the public has little respect for people who teach at a two-year college instead of a prestigious university.
Community colleges serve the neediest students who’ve “suffered the most from poor secondary education,” Jenkins writes. Unlike university professors, community college instructors teach entry-level students.
To be fruitful in the long run, our public debates over educational issues like assessment, college readiness, the Common Core, online learning, student loans, corporatization, adjunctification, state funding, guns on campus, and tenure must include more faculty voices from community colleges.
But many community college professors don’t want to take the time or “rock the boat,” Jenkins writes. “They don’t want to bring the administration down on their heads, or face their colleagues’ resentment, or risk being laughed at because, after all, they teach at a community college.”
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