A Little Holiday Thankfulness...
I couldn’t help but notice that Substack pushed out a nice way to write and publish simple text posts straight from the cool app so I thought I’d try it out. Honestly, I can’t see using it very much for my own scrappy little newsletter since, in an apparent effort to drive down potential readership, I like to include lots of images, graphs, and equations. But from time to time there might be little things to write about that I can do comfortably on the ole iPad as opposed to firing up the desktop in the office.
Let this be one of those times.
I teach at a local community college (and have for the past 20-ish years); as this time of year rolls by I get a bit contemplative about the profession of teaching in general and how things have gone the past term in particular. This year I’ve been thinking more and more about colleges like mine and what a valuable niche they fill in higher-ed. Fiscally, it’s typically a pretty tough position to be in. They aren’t included in budgeting for K-12 public schools and have to feed from the same trough as the more name-brand state institutions who do teach undergraduates, to be sure, but have other budgetary and mission priorities as well (research, patents, grants...), also resulting in additional income streams. As state support for higher-ed declines, community colleges are uniquely vulnerable to the whims of the legislature, and often have no choice but to raise tuition to try to maintain services, harming the very population they’re trying to serve.
What is this population? I can only speak from my experience, but I’ve been witness to some of the hardest-working, dedicated, inspiring people trying to better themselves and their station in life I could imagine. When I read popular accounts of a lost generation of entitled and delicate college students wasting their years and college loans at parties and “useless” classes, I really don’t recognize it. Of course there are individual cases to pick on, but as a pattern, my students seem to know that this is their best (and sometimes last) shot at their dreams. Sometimes they are the very students that frittered away their early college years and now are grasping the mantle of adult responsibility firmly. Sometimes they’re first-generation college students not really sure if they can do it (they can). Sometimes they’re students who simply can’t afford in-state tuition at the university or didn’t make it through their first time. And some of my students already attend the state 4-year university, but choose some courses here because of our dedicated focus on small classrooms, expanded 1-1 office hour help times, and expertise in teaching as a profession. It’s inspiring in those cases that we get chosen because we’re *better*, not just cheaper and more accessible.
So this is just a message of thankfulness I’ll release into the greater void, the kind of grateful appreciation you all surely feel when you realize you get to make a difference in peoples’ lives. My trigger this year is noting from Linked-In messages and personal correspondence how many former students have launched themselves into fantastic careers from humble beginnings. A woman who grew up dirt poor on a farm in China comes here, plows through the remedial math sequence, discovers a love of physics, graduates, and goes to grad school, researching as part of a group physicists at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider; another student worked on his 2-year degree in pre-engineering here and now wins a prestigious honor at Berkeley as a biomedical engineer. Many, many similar stories. You get the idea. And a good percentage of our faculty actually started here as students and wanted to return to close the circle.
What I love about the narrative of a community college is what I loved about the theme of Pixar’s “Ratatouille” -- the inspirational source for Remy the Rat Cook said that “Anyone can cook!”, and the realization by the end is that doesn’t necessarily guarantee a particular outcome for *everyone*, but the avenue is opened such that “a great cook can come *from anywhere*”. I don’t guarantee my students that everyone will become an engineer or physicist, but I do believe that our model of access means that the way is open for anyone to give it a shot -- that’s all that a lot of people want, just to feel *at least* that they’re not locked out of future possibilities, and their destinies are in their own hands.
So, to wind this overly-long message up: I imagine that I don’t count many multi-millionaire philanthropists amongst my followers, but sometimes at this time of year people consider donating resources to local causes. I’m just going to suggest that if you’re one of those people, or you run in those circles, maybe just look into your local community college’s general fund, foundation, or scholarship. If you’re the type that wants your name on a building, well then perhaps this isn’t directed at you -- nothing inherently wrong with that, but my suggestion is that if what you’re after is to change lives through higher education, you can probably affect more lives per dollar by helping to fund your community college than most other institutions.
... and now back to writing niche newsletters with a bunch of formulas and junk! Merry Christmas all!
-- T