Helping students to remain n school and to reach their educational goals is one of the many challenges facing community colleges. While it is important to help all students, the needs of the neglected minority population require special attention.
If we are serious about helping minority students to achieve academic success, then intervention must occur earlier in the educational process. This can be realized as public education at the elementary and secondary levels strengthen its educational planning and academic preparation of minority students.
Far too many students are entering college ill-prepared. As such, community colleges must consider establishing effective articulation plans with public schools. College's must also consider strengthening their relationships with organizations that deal extensively with minority students -- in order to attract not only the conventionally aged eighteen-to-twenty-year-old freshmen, but to also attract other individuals who display the potential to benefit from the community college experience.
Over the past five years, African Americans and Native Americans and Native Americans have experienced some decline in postsecondary retention, while Asians and Hispanics have witnessed only slight increases. Declining high school completion figures are another factor impacting college participation by the various minority groups.
Increasing the rate of participation and success of minority students will benefit not only these specific groups, but the society as a whole. As we approach the end of the twentieth century, we are entering an era in which the shifts in technology and demography present the community college with the greatest challenge in its history.
Through the year 2000, one of every three American school children will be a person of color, and minority workers will compose approximately one-third of net additions to the work force. How we, as a nation, deal with the growing diversity of American society is linked to how we match the needs of the labor market to the profile of our diverse labor pool.
