Community Colleges

Introduction

Community colleges contribute significantly towards the social and economic mobility of the American society. Community colleges are places of culture. People belonging to a diverse range of ethnicity, races, religions, social statuses and cultures take admissions to the community colleges and deem them as platforms that encourage cultural pluralism and diversity. While community colleges promote the need of a cultural mix within societies where each race is respected and given a legitimate right to receive rewards and burdens, the issues emerging out of this ethnicity and diversity in the educational sector, especially community colleges, raise some serious doubts on its applicability and effectiveness. This paper intends to identify the issues in community college settings that relate to racial and ethnic differences among students. A detailed insight to these issues will be provided in the course of this paper with possible recommendations and solutions in the end (Michael, pp. 87).

Discussion

Over the past thirty years, it has been observed that a large number of students belonging to different race, ethnicities, the poor and middle-class, and the working class students accessed the postsecondary education through the welcoming doors of “Community Colleges”. These colleges provide students with “open door” accessibility to education which the other colleges and universities may not appreciate on such a grand scale. Hence it provides them with an opportunity to acquire education and contribute towards their societal and national prosperity as productive citizens of the state. Despite this phenomenon, the question whether these community colleges really promote social mobility and cultural diversity of the minorities, remains a debatable topic (Martha, pp. 59).

Although diversity has been widely agreed to be a sound feature of education, institutional and organizational diversity is under threat and more serious efforts are required to sustain the practice before it leads to distress and indiscipline. Campus racial environment has long been a subject of research. It has led to a general belief that minorities are still not been given their due share of respect, recognition and acknowledgement within the community colleges and universities. There have been many incidents reported where intolerance on the basis of race, gender and sexual orientation has been observed. The students within the community colleges look down upon the minorities or culturally diverse pupils and hinder in their paths to progress and succeed in academics and athletics within the campus. They not only would not like to participate with the minorities but also would not be willing to appreciate their presence and interruption in their matters. This creates serious issues of violence within the premises and gives a hard time to the administration to solve these fights. Despite regular efforts, the minority students especially those disabled, white women, gay and lesbians, Black American etc. find the campus atmosphere unresponsive towards their needs and expectations. As a result, these students are dejected and under continuous stress. They end up alienating themselves out of the predominant white culture within the community colleges and perform badly in academic activities. It has also been witnessed that ...