A Study of Workforce Training Challenges Faced by a US Community College and a Comparable Chinese Institution

Author(s):  
Harry Hou ◽  
Diane E. Oliver

This qualitative comparative case study examines the workforce training programs offered in a US community college and the vocational and technical programs offered in a comparable Chinese postsecondary institution. The study sought to identify transferable qualities and characteristics that could contribute to improving the workforce training programs in both countries. Globalization makes international collaboration between institutions and programs ever more important, particularly considering the many shared problems and potential for shared solutions. The study’s findings resulted in four primary recommendations that could be adopted by both the US and Chinese case institutions: (a) create timely new programs and courses, (b) seek new funding sources and alternatives for reducing operational costs, (c) recruit qualified full-time or part-time faculty who have industry experience, and (d) add a critical thinking component in all courses. Moreover, recommendations for each of the institutions were developed.

2020 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 156
Author(s):  
Yahya Mohammad Alshehri

This paper attempts to shed more light on the teaching practices of part-time faculty members and their impacts on community college students. It has been found that part-time faculty members employ traditional teaching practices compared to full-time faculty members. These teaching practices have, to varying degrees, negative effects on community college students. It has also been found that some of the compelling factors that hinder part-time faculty from utilizing effective teaching practices are institutional and departmental policies and practices. This paper identifies some gaps in the literature and calls future studies. It delineates a couple of recommendations aiming at improving the teaching practices of part-time faculty as well as their working condition. 


AERA Open ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 233285842090149
Author(s):  
Florence Xiaotao Ran ◽  
Jasmine Sanders

More than half of community college courses are taught by part-time faculty. Drawing on data from six community colleges, this study estimates the effects of part-time faculty versus full-time faculty on students’ current and subsequent course outcomes in developmental and gateway courses, using course fixed effects and propensity score matching to minimize bias arising from student self-sorting across and within courses. We find that part-time faculty have negative effects on student subsequent enrollments. These negative effects are driven by results in math courses. We also find that course schedules could explain substantial proportions of the estimated negative effects, while faculty individual characteristics could not. Survey results on faculty professional experiences suggest that part-time faculty had less institutional knowledge regarding both academic and nonacademic services. We infer that inferior working conditions for part-time faculty, rather than inferior instructional practices, contribute to the negative effects we observed on students’ subsequent course enrollment.


Author(s):  
Jonathon Oden

Abstract The purpose of this study was to descriptively analyze music therapy employment data from 2013 to 2019, including years in the field, gender, age, ethnicity, hours worked, jobs created, number of new board-certified music therapists (MT-BCs), funding sources, and wages. A database was created to analyze descriptive data from the 2013–2019 American Music Therapy Association Workforce Analysis Surveys as well as data from the Certification Board for Music Therapists. Results indicate a large portion of music therapists (MTs) have been in the field for five years or less. Though the majority of MTs work full time, there is a high rate of part-time employment. An estimate of the total number of new full-time jobs represented a ratio of 57% of new MT-BCs during the period. Private pay was the most reported funding source for music therapy services. Music therapy wages tended to be higher for those with higher levels of education. Limitations of the study and suggestions for future research are provided.


1979 ◽  
Vol 12 (03) ◽  
pp. 318-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Gruberg ◽  
Virginia Sapiro

In the late sixties, women in the United States became sensitized to their second-class status and organized to raise their consciousness and change their conditions. At the same time women in academia began to organize within their disciplines to address the problems they faced there. Political science was no exception; in 1969, when women constituted 5 percent of the membership of the APSA and 8 percent of all political science faculty teaching in colleges and universities, the APSA Committee on the Status of Women in the Profession and the Women's Caucus for Political Science formed. Numerous reports have revealed a moderate increase in the presence of women in the profession in recent years. As Table 1 shows, the percentage of degrees in political science awarded to women has increased since 1970. By the academic year 1976–77 women constituted 11 percent of full-time faculty and 18 percent of part-time faculty. Twenty-three percent of the students entering Ph.D. programs in 1977 were women, a downturn of 3 percent from the previous year, although an overall rise from the previous decade.


Author(s):  
Paul Lauter

While increasing attention began to be focused a decade ago on the scandalous misuse of part-time or “adjunct” faculty in colleges, their use has persistently spread. In fact, new varieties of “temporary” positions continue to be invented by college managers. “Part-time” faculty now include some who teach what amounts to a full load, but who are paid on a credit hour or per course basis, others who scramble for one or two courses each term and are paid flat rates, as well as a few whose salaries and benefits are prorated fractions of those of a full-timer. But there are now many “off-tenure” full-time appointments as well: “lecturers,” whose contracts are renewed every year or two but who may remain in their positions, without tenure, indefinitely; “nontenure-track” instructors and assistant professors, who may stay at an institution for four, six or more years but who, at the point of a tenure decision, must move on; “replacement” appointments, who fill lines for a year or two and then migrate to similar positions elsewhere. I shall use the term “adjunct faculty” or “adjuncts” to describe this quite varied group of individuals, for while the word is not precisely appropriate in all cases, its dictionary definition calls attention to the fact that such faculty, while “joined or added” to the institution, are in critical ways “not essentially a part of it.” Handwringing over the plight of adjuncts has brought no relief, and even most union contracts have so far been marginally helpful. That should be no surprise, for the exploitation of adjuncts serves a number of crucial interests of college managers and of those to whom they report. It is important to identify these interests more clearly if the abuse of this large number of our colleagues is ever to be brought under control, much less halted. For the exploitation of adjuncts is not a function of managerial nastiness, nor is it—any more than was the War on Vietnam—an unfortunate product of historical “accidents.” Rather, it is rooted in a particular conception of college management designed to serve historically distinctive social and political interests.


1986 ◽  
Vol 1986 (53) ◽  
pp. 15-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dauid Hartleb ◽  
William Vilter

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