We have covered the increasing role of community colleges in American education.

Josh Wyner’s new book describes what community colleges do well, and what they can do better.  Inside Higher Ed’s Paul Fain had a chat with the author, who discusses the details.

Josh Wyner visits a lot of community colleges. After several years traveling the country to help administer the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence, Wyner wrote a book to share what he’s seen.

The Aspen Prize has shined a spotlight on what community colleges do well. But it has also helped exhort the sector to do better, and to back up its achievements with data. Wyner, the executive director of the Aspen College Excellence, has brought that same tough love approach with his book, which is titled What Excellent Community Colleges Do: Preparing All Students for Success (Harvard Education Press).

We recently caught up with Wyner over email to discuss the findings he shared in the book.

Q. Have community colleges become more responsive to labor markets? Are most doing this well enough?

A. Most community colleges deliver credentials through two distinct operational units — general education and career/technical education (CTE). While some do a better job than others, nearly every CTE program has a long history of working with employers to respond to regional needs for workforce skills. But most community college students nationally are not in CTE programs; rather, they’re pursuing an associate degree that is in essence the first two years of a bachelor’s degree. Plenty of evidence — from employer surveys to assessments of college graduates’ critical-thinking abilities — suggests that general education programs (both two-year and four-year) are not adequately delivering the problem-solving, communications and other skills employers need.

In many cases, general education programs could learn a lot from high-functioning CTE programs. ..

Q. You’ve suggested that community colleges could learn from for-profits. Which lessons?

A. To be clear, some activities of some for-profit educational institutions, like predatory marketing practices, run counter to the public interest. But there are practices of for-profits that are worth paying attention to. For example, some take the professors with the highest retention rates in upper-division classes and assign them to entry-level classes. They even pay more for teaching intro classes. This, of course, is the opposite of what happens in most traditional colleges, where professors with seniority opt out of teaching entry-level classes. Why the difference? Keeping students through that first year improves overall graduation rates, which means more students and greater profits. In this case, at least, the profit goal and student goals are aligned…..