Research On American Approaches To Developing Community Colleges And Insights To China

In America, the community college constitutes an important component in its higher education system, and plays an indispensable role in its social and economic development. It is flourishing in recent years owing to the fact that it especially accommodates needs of the unemployed to further their education and enhance their knowledge and skills aiming for their re-employment in future. It is of great significance to trace the history of this college and promote our understanding of adult education so that America could lend some insights to China.The present study adopts literature review and comparative analysis to investigate the development of American community college in terms of its roles, managerial mechanism, funding, staff management, teaching management and enrollment policy. Results reveal that it is characterized by discipline diversity and functional comprehensiveness, which enables it to best serve people’s learning needs and play an vital part in the long-life learning system in America. Their successes are largely attributed to such factors as market-orientedness, discipline diversity, higher-level staff, funding expansion, practice-basedness, and multiplied roles.The community college will be one of the keys in Chinese educational development. It is necessary to explore an approach with Chinese characteristics. The present study then samples Shanghai and Hangzhou to poll the status quo of community college in China, and finds that there are various problems in respects of positioning, funding, staff, legislation, distribution, and objectives etc. Findings indicate that for Chinese community college, much could be learned from its American peers to popularize and socialize this novel education, serving the end of elevate people’s quality and morality. Measures shall be taken. Firstly, community-basedness and community-orientedness are the fundamental. Secondly, legislation is to be erected to strengthen its sustainable development. Thirdly, staff quality is to be enhanced and funding be increased. Thus, educational reform could be implemented systematically, and a community college system, which combines others’ experiences and Chinese own situations, could be established in the end.