Minding the Obligation Gap in Community Colleges and Beyond: Theory and Practice in Achieving Educational Equity

by Jeremiah J. Sims, Jennifer Taylor-Mendoza, Lasana O. Hotep

It is difficult to find justice-centered books geared specifically for community college practitioners interested in achieving campus wide educational equity. It is even more difficult to find a book in this vein written, exclusively, by community college practitioners. Minding the Obligation Gap in Community Colleges and Beyond is just a concerted effort by a cross-representational group of community college practitioners working to catalyze conversations and eventually practices that attend to the most pressing equity gaps in and on our campuses. By illuminating the constitutive parts of the ever-increasing obligation gap, this book offers both theory and practice in reforming community colleges so that they function as disruptive technologies. It is our position that equity-centered community colleges hold the potential to call out, impede, and even disrupt institutionalized polices, pedagogies, and practices that negatively impact poor, ethno-racially minoritized students of color. If you and your college is interested in striving for educational equity campus-wide please join us in this ongoing conversation on how to work for equity for all of the students that we serve.

274 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 28, 2020

Reviews

[Kirttimukha TheCat · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is amazing and eye opening. Hearing about the historical circumstances surrounding the creation of community colleges helped explain some of the circumstances that exist. The idea that community colleges were designed to keep people out of 4 year research based institutes isn't surprising. Reading about the chapter about faculty helped (sadly) to codify my experiences as an adjunct and made me feel that the differing status between full time and adjunct faculty is an issue of equity. I kept reading the chapter and saying, this doesn't include me. This isn't a criticism, it was a revelation. I read this as part of a book group over the past 11 months, so I can't possibly do the book justice with a review here. The ending chapter took the preceding theoretical chapters and made them into action, asking readers to identify barriers and plan action to eliminate them. For me personally, it helped me recognize the resource gaps for students. For example, my community college focuses on food and housing insecurity, but not childcare. It hit me like a bolt of lightening that this was because the college focuses on recruiting high school graduates instead of the much larger population of adult learners available in our county. Studies are already telling us that 75% of current college students aren't the traditional 18 year old students of old. They have jobs, marriages, babies, and elder care. I think everyone involved in community colleges should read this book.

[Greg Bem · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd rate this lovely book higher but the transitions between chapters fall a little flat (making the reading experience feel choppy) and there are quite a few typos. Otherwise, incredible reading for community college workers.