With an $850,000 grant awarded to Teachers College this week, professors hope to begin research that could lead to radical improvements in the community college structure.
The grant, from the national Kresge Foundation, will go to TC’s Community College Research Center for a launch research project that is now in the early stages.
The study will focus on Macomb Community College near Detroit, Mich., and using their findings, the researchers hope to create new policies for community colleges across the country.
“We need to begin looking at the institution as a whole,” said CCRC director Thomas Bailey, who is part of the team working on the project. “Institution-wide policy and structures could be tweaked to help smooth the way for systemic improvement across the whole school.”
Bailey said he hopes their research will address a lack of coherency in community college policies as well as structural problems hindering student success.
Researchers said they chose Macomb because it seemed fairly representative of community colleges and could be a good springboard for future initiatives.
Though it’s not the largest grant the center has received—prior ones have ranged from $20,000 to $10 million—Bailey said he was optimistic that this research could have a serious impact.
But this grant from the Kresge Foundation differs from many of the center’s grants in the past due to the extent of its impact, he said.
The center has tackled specific problems related to community colleges before, but this time, he said, the team hopes to be more comprehensive.
“We did the math and realized that specific programs, no matter how wonderful, are unlikely to accomplish change on the scale required,” Bailey said.
Shanna Jaggars, a senior research assistant at TC, said the project will provide an outside perspective on the school. “You could almost call this a radical approach. Unlike past smaller projects, we are approaching the sharp angles of institutions with the hope to overcome day-to-day problems in creating a large-picture solution,” she said.
Bailey said it’s important to focus research efforts on community colleges, which are accessible to a wide subset of the population.
“They provide low-income students with the opportunity to get a higher education and move on to a well-paying career,” he said. “These students face many challenges as they attempt to persevere through college and earn a degree.”
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