MONDAY BUZZ: ACE Annual Meeting Kicks Off in San Diego; Role of
Community Colleges Is Focus of Opening Address
Feb. 11, 2008
College and university leaders from around the
country are gathering this week in San Diego at the American Council on
Education's (ACE) 90th Annual Meeting, which formally kicked off Sunday
evening with an address by LaGuardia Community College (NY)
President Gail Mellow.
The ACE
Annual Meeting provides a forum for college and university
presidents and senior campus administrators to discuss key policy issues
and share best practices. This year’s meeting at the
Manchester Grand Hyatt Hotel runs through tomorrow and explores the
theme “Taking Charge of Our Future.”
 Delivering the 2008 Robert H. Atwell
Lecture, Mellow told her colleagues that the world is radically
different from the one that created the current system of higher
education, and that the two-tiered system of four-year and two-year
institutions needs to be revisioned in order to better serve a diverse
student population and help the United States remain competitive
in the global economy.
"The fact is that what
happens to community colleges affects all of higher education. As higher
education leaders, we have allowed the baccalaureate and community
college systems to develop separately and unequally, with tenuous points
of integration and inadequate financial support," she told the
audience.
"Higher education funding
and quality assessment is still premised on what are now nostalgic
memories of traditional-aged, upper-middle class college students.
Unless we let go of this myth and realistically face the modern
demographics of the U.S. college population—who goes and who
should go to college—the relevance and status of American higher
education in a competitive, global education market will
erode."
The full text of Mellow's lecture can be downloaded from
the LaGuardia Community College web
site.
For further reading:
ACE Blog post on Mellow's address by ACE
Fellow Jason A. Scorza
Call for Equity for Community Colleges
Inside Higher Ed
2-Year-College Leader Has Advice and Criticism for Peers
at 4-Year Institutions
The Chronicle of Higher Education (sub. req.)
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