Business of the Year

My IHE colleague Rachel Toor posted a piece a couple of weeks ago about college vice presidents that rang a bell. In the image she used, faculty are on the dance floor and presidents are on the balcony; vice presidents (and deans, I’d add) are on the stairway, moving between the two.

She was right.

I saw it last month at the kickoff event for the new semester. In the midst of talking with the faculty about the move next year to eight-week courses, the head of the local chamber of commerce burst in to present the president with a plaque designating the college as the local business of the year. Pictures were taken, hands were shaken, congratulations were offered.

Immediately after the folks in the photo op left, one professor raised his hand and objected to the award, noting that the college is not a business.

An academic vice president has to understand both sides of that.

Community colleges contain multitudes, so in looking at them, people tend to see what they choose to see. Political and business leaders often see them as job-training centers and not much else. Sometimes they apply logics of market competition to what was originally designed as a public service, leading to all manner of misunderstandings. Some faculty take the opposite view, seeing community colleges primarily as colleges, with some job training on the side. From that perspective, which has more merit than is often acknowledged, community colleges shouldn’t be reduced to job-training centers; they’re colleges, with everything that implies.

A few weeks ago, a meme made the rounds locally saying that the University of Pittsburgh was going to tear down its signature building, the Cathedral of Learning, and replace it with the Cathedral of Marketable Skills. It struck a chord.

The conflict is consistent because both sides are right enough. Yes, community colleges are much more focused on job training than most four-year colleges and universities. That’s particularly true in the trades, which are having a cultural moment far surpassing their actual enrollments. But it’s also true that community colleges are on-ramps for transfer to four-year institutions, and that a surprising number of bachelor’s degree grads have community college credits in the mix, whether they got the associate along the way or not. The folks who teach, say, history can get frustrated with the barrage of messaging around “aligning” with employers. (True alignment implies reciprocity.) I don’t blame them.

Afterward, I mentioned to the professor that local funding is key to the operations of the college, and that an award like that might speak to local political leaders in a language they can understand. No, the college is not run for profit, but it does have to meet a budget, and recognition can help garner financial support that can allow it to do more of its educational mission. Public acknowledgment that we’re doing good work, especially coming from a source that legislators respect, can be helpful. It would be nice if external recognition extended as well to the transfer side, but partial praise beats no praise.

It’s not quite the French “l’esprit de l’escalier”—the wit of the staircase—but I’ll take it.

Once in a while, though, something breaks through. On Wednesday we had a dedication ceremony for a Sept. 11 memorial. The artwork was built by students in a special topics summer class run by a couple of art professors. It’s public art, which forces a different set of constraints than more personal work; it was designed by committee, and it had to be built to withstand the elements for years.

The students spoke at the ceremony, and they were terrific. They mentioned that Sept. 11, 2001, happened before most of them were born (!), so part of the experience was learning about the event and its cultural ripple effects. The ceremony also featured a state senator, a county commissioner and some local press.

In this context, I didn’t hear any of the usual “what are you going to do with that” comments around art. Instead, I heard appreciation for the perspective that art offered, and for the hard work of the students. As somber as the remembrance was, that gave me hope.

We’re in the hope business. This year and every year.