Globalization and the community college mission

Globalization has produced significant changes in higher education, and research has explored the ways in which four-year institutions have been affected. There is insufficient research, however, into how globalization is changing community colleges and their enacted mission. Knowing this is important because community colleges are typically the main access to higher education for underserved, disenfranchised populations, including low-income students, African American and Latino students, immigrant students, and women. Community colleges enroll almost one half of all undergraduates in America and 41% of first-time freshmen. Community colleges train workers and are therefore deeply implicated in the national effort to build an American workforce that can compete in the global economy of the twenty-first century. What happens to community colleges and their mission happens to 12.4 million credit and non-credit students, most of whom already participate in the nation's workforce. However, community colleges as a group are under-researched, and their experiences with the transformative effects of globalization, including any difficulties for their unique mission, go largely unnoticed and unchecked. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to discover and analyze how community college leaders in one northeast state in America experience and understand globalization and the changes it brings to the enacted mission of their colleges. Semi-structured interviews with twelve purposefully selected administrators at three colleges provided data for this study. Other data sources included documents, non-participant observations, and websites. Globalization theory and contingency theory framed the thematic analysis used to sort and organize the data. The results of this research suggested that the enacted mission of the community college was in flux and globalization was an identifiable influence in some of the major recognizable changes, which included increasing diversity and multiculturalism in students, faculty and the curriculum; leveling of barriers and increasing interconnectedness among students; and building of global competency in students. This study extends existing research on globalization and the community college mission, and invites community college leaders to institute a culture of research in their colleges as part of a broad reflective practice that will assess mission and other community college issues on a continuous and sustainable basis.;Keywords: case study; community college; community college leaders; community college leadership; community college mission; contingency theory; globalization; globalization theory; higher education; mission; purposeful sampling; qualitative study; semi-structured interviews; thematic analysis; two-year colleges.