edited by James C. Palmer and Stephen G. Katsinas Jossey-Bass Inc., San Francisco, 1996
I had looked forward with considerable anticipation to the
publication of Palmer’s and Katsinas’s Graduate and Continuing
Education for Community College Leaders: What It Means Today.
I know the majority of the authors featured in this publication as
dedicated professionals, sincerely concerned about the future of the
community college and those who will lead it into the next century. It
was my hope this work would offer the first objective and comprehensive
assessment of the twenty-odd graduate programs concentrating on
community college leadership, and that this assessment would form the
basis of an objective discussion of the relevance of these programs now
and in coming decades.
That my hopes would not be fulfilled was evident from the moment I reviewed the work’s table of contents.
Like too many other publications within Jossey-Bass’s New
Directions series, Graduate and Continuing Education for Community
College Leaders is an ensemble work. In keeping with conventional
practice, the work’s two editors, James Palmer and Stephen Katsinas,
assembled a large number of essays — ten in all — apparently with the
objective of providing a wide range of perspectives on the present and
future state of community college graduate programs.
What the reader soon realizes, however, is that inclusion and
diversity have come at the price of an extended and objective
engagement with the subject matter. Because of its highly fragmented
organization and the brevity of each chapter, the overall work favors
description over analysis and superficial treatment over the more
involved process of constructing persuasive arguments. One gets little
sense that the various chapters that make up this work are joined
together by any shared perspective or sense of larger purpose.
The range of topics that the book attempts to cover is really quite
staggering. One chapter, by Raymond Young, attempts to summarize the
history of community college leadership programs. Another, by Katsinas,
argues that leadership programs should take into account the tremendous
diversity of institutional types now clustered under the community
college tent. Yet another, by Berta Laden! describes a number of
continuing education programs offered by community college professional
associations.
