Friday Fragments: Readers Respond | Confessions of a Community College Dean

When I posted past week on the “word problem”—a budgetary dilemma, essentially—I was hoping that some folks had identified stylish methods for it.

Judging by the responses I acquired, many others are struggling with the exact dilemmas and are equally stumped.

Grants are practical, but they normally arrive with rather limited restrictions. (A tip of the cap to MacKenzie Scott for breaking that sample, but alas, she stays an exception.) That is significantly true with federal grants that rely on the “supplement, not supplant” rule. In simple English, that implies they can’t be employed on just about anything you would have paid out for in any case without the need of the grant. They cannot be used to offset cuts to working budgets.

Regular audience may well roll their eyes at an additional mention of Baumol’s charge ailment, but until finally we get away from an entirely time-based mostly product, we’re going to be facing dilemmas like these throughout the board. Alternately, we could see a sea modify in our politics, but that looks like a dangerous guess.

The organization design has to modify. If there’s an instance of a college or university that has slash its way to greatness, I have not observed it.

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Many thanks, way too, to the smart and worldly visitors who responded with some insights on twin admissions. I had instructed that the restricted uptake of a lot of dual admissions packages reflected a combination of pupil uncertainty about tutorial paths and student uncertainty about finances, possibly topped off with just not realizing that the programs exist.

A couple audience prompt that geography performs much more of a job than I had acknowledged. In some elements of the state, the nearest 4-year school may be far too significantly away to commute. Alternately, even if it is fairly close, pupils with transportation troubles may well not be in a position to get there. It is a good place.

Other folks described incapacity as an obtain challenge a scholar who now struggles to arrive at a community higher education may perhaps find even a comparatively shut 4-year college proficiently out of variety. Once more, a superior place.

I haven’t found quite a few dual admissions courses that target on on the web enrollments, but it looks like they could possibly offer workarounds for at the very least some of the problems. And it became very clear that some packages are substantially extra profitable than other individuals I’ll have to do some digging to determine out their secrets …

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The post on dual enrollment, and the relative deficiency of rules around it, unleashed a torrent of “tell me about it!” responses. The most widespread grievances centered all around academic integrity and/or instructor credentials. When those aren’t tightly managed, enterprising significant colleges may well at times just take liberties.

In my condition, plans grew substantially much more rapidly than condition recognition of them did, so the regulations are lagging the follow considerably. It appears that my condition is not on your own in that.

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Many thanks to my wise and worldly readers for composing (or tweeting) in reaction. You continue to keep me trustworthy, and for that, I’m grateful.