Stylus Publishing (VA) Gateway to Opportunity?: A History of the Community College in the United States

Review "Josh Beach expertly uses the lens of history to provide a penetrating and insightful account, examining the challenges facing community colleges. Some will find this an uncomfortable read, but all will find it thought provoking. Its detailed history and analysis of community colleges is not used to reinforce their current practices, but opens up the 'long conversation' and demands in us a reconsideration of what they might be.--Martin Jephcote, Cardiff University School of Social Sciences (UK) (10/1/2010 12:00:00 AM)"Josh Beach is a courageous visionary among those who seriously consider the community college and its place within the larger U.S. system of higher education. This book reflects both his critical nature and the boldness he brings to analyses of higher education. It paves new ground for re-envisioning the community college and the larger educational system of which it is such a critically important element."--Robert Rhoads, professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change at UCLA. (7/1/2010 12:00:00 AM)"This book not only raises important questions about the educational practices and effectiveness of community colleges historically, it also provides detailed analyses and case studies that should inform policy debates and decision-making in the twenty-first century. Educators, researchers, administrators, and government officials concerned about the future of community colleges, and U.S. higher education in general, cannot afford to ignore J. M. Beach's findings and conclusions"--V.P. Franklin, University of California Presidential Chair, Distinguished Professor of History and Education, University of California, Riverside (10/1/2010 12:00:00 AM)A strength of this book is Beach's focus on the community college as an evolving social institution, a perspective not common in previous literature. Another strength is Beach's focus on the dilemmas faced by community colleges as presented from the perspectives of faculty, administrators, state officials, local communities, and students.-- "NACADA Journal (National Academic Advising Association)" (9/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)Although the book seems primarily intended for policymakers and administators, Gateway to Opportunity nevertheless makes two important contributions to the history of the community college. First, Beach extends The Diverted Dream into the more recent past. The book discusses tuition increases, financial exigencies, employer contract training programs, and provides a particularly thorough treatment of the movement for institutional accountability... Second, Beach emphasizes racial segregation to a greater exten than Brint and Karabel.-- "History of Education Quarterly" (9/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)Beach's focus on the community college as an evolving social institution offers a perspective not found in earlier literature... For readers interested in the history of the community college as a social institution, this book offers a concise treatment of its subject with numerous references to many important articles and texts that have reported on change and practice at the community college. Approaching the community college as a social institution offers a perspective that should be used more often to better understand the development, changes, and dilemmas in the history of this uniquely American experiment in post-secondary education.-- "Community College Review" (10/1/2012 12:00:00 AM)Focuses on issues of access and effectiveness in a critical evaluation of community colleges; including a cautionary case study of California-- "The Chronicle of Higher Ed" (3/1/2011 12:00:00 AM)Josh Beach's Gateway to Opportunity does a fine job of outlining the dilemmas that community colleges face now, and the dilemmas that colleges as well as historians and policy-makers need to chew over. It asks us all to think long and hard about the educational institutions we create, and why they seem so contradictory. I like to think that faculty and administrators could us