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.
Community colleges must view this challenge as a opportunity. They
must find better ways of serving the nation’s minority students, or
face a nation with a greatly weakened economic and social fabric.
