The twenty-first Century calls for the introduction of what I favor to think of as a “Communiversity” — an organizing method that permits us to tap the prevailing public sources of our secondary schools, the community university, and our regional public universities. That method cutting-edge community-university leaders need to conceptually view and expand their definition of “network” past the network university campus to K-12, college and nonprofit community-primarily based service partners.
We ought to move from a noticeably disconnected array of institutions to a more tightly bundled machine of network-primarily based education. What is needed is a brand new institutional version, one that promotes “stickiness” between community schools and these other public sectors corporations.
This Communiversity form of public schooling stitches together the time and talent of our employees with the capital and financial assets of current establishments and agencies: building out a brand new, greater effective surroundings of public schooling.
In many approaches, the network faculties of nowadays are exceptionally positioned to promote that stickiness through serving as conveners or organizing bodies to leverage the joint capacities of the K-12, network college and nearby university partners. Through this association, the partner sectors may want to expand and deliver career and academic pathways that integrate secondary and postsecondary schooling via a new transport paradigm. Combining local consortia of secondary schools and network university with a nearby public college would create multiple career pathways that are localized and a long way less highly-priced than an ultra-modern allotted machine.
Imagine a regional Communiversity that stitches together the assets of network faculties and neighborhood public secondary structures to deliver excessive price, low-fee certificates, companion levels, baccalaureate and grasp’s levels through a networked system, both honestly and face-to-face. Through the distribution of network faculties throughout our we of a those academic credentials could be introduced locally so that they are tightly connected to business enterprise wishes and aligned with monetary development tasks. The Communiversity could be anchored by a university that gives studies and analysis to tell investments in skills improvement this is aligned with local and local wishes.
By the use of the blended assets of these institutions, a couple of delivery platforms may be built out and introduced across the system — assume face-to-face, digital, competency-based totally, credit score for earlier gaining knowledge of and so forth. Some not unusual concepts of this organizing model would be:
Open admissions in which all students would be eligible for admission in certificate and companion degree programs and all finished accomplice ranges might guarantee to get admission to to the accomplice baccalaureate diploma throughout the machine.
Customized shipping platforms designed to house each young beginners and adults and be greater customized to the needs of person learners. Opportunities to provide earn-and-examine experiences for college students, such as internships or apprenticeships, that permit college students to decide earlier instead of later if a career consciousness is a right suit for them.
Affordable, so that students ought to live at home and manage to pay for training via summer season and component-time jobs. Independent students would be able to get entry to the continuum of credentials provided at a price factor this is aligned with the present-day network university pricing version.
Continuous enrollment with all packages aligned with paintings-pressure wishes or monetary improvement tasks presented each without a doubt and in-man or woman and available at each web site.
Information structures, information sharing agreements, analytical tools, and learning guide structures might be commonplace throughout the system. Student enrollment services structures would be on a not unusual platform and to be had 24/7 at all web sites. All credentials would rest on a core of vital paintings-force skills: communication, vital wondering, generation literacy, writing, numeracy, and problem fixing.
The Communiversity I envision is a very specific model, from its organizational layout to its implementation strategies. It leverages the geography, fee factor and connectivity of network colleges to the local people school systems, employers, regional universities and nonprofit community-based totally service groups. This device might pass from that specialize in access and enrollment to a machine of access, evaluation and of entirety.
In a trendy economic system, it’s miles hard to assume a grownup on this country main a success, self- and family-maintaining lifestyles without the benefit of each a postsecondary credential and ongoing get entry to to credentialing structures that aid a lifetime of labor and development. America has really end up a expertise financial system, one that needs postsecondary readiness for all excessive faculty graduates and postsecondary credentialing for lifestyles.
