As a whole, my aim is toilluminate how college students understand their educationalpaths, what mismatches exist between their expectations andtheir professors’ expectations, and how some of the traditionalstructures and norms of higher education function as obstaclesto increased access and educational opportunity.

But chang-ing from within requires a more comprehensive understandingof today’s college students and how to address their needs.

mong his conclusions were that excellentteachers tend to assume that their students can learn at a highlevel, and that such teachers understand enough about how peo-ple learn to be able to support in-depth learning.

As far as I’m concerned, this is col-lege. It’s time you learned to think on your own. And there arestudents who will not take classes from me because I have a rep-utation as one of the harder instructors on campus.

“I haven’t changed my standards. If a student ishaving trouble because of a job, early on, I’ll say, ‘Well, maybeyou could switch to somebody else’s class.’” Similarly, anotherinstructor who situated herself on the side of standards noted,“Some of us are—I hesitate to say—more ‘rigorous’ than others.

Being unprepared to meet certain expectations, however, is notthe same as being unable to meet them.

weak skillsand lack of preparation for the demands of college. What it isexactly that constitutes college readiness, therefore, is not wellde fined

“college readiness.”

“Underprepared as far as study skills,a poor reader, poorer skill at mechanics than I anticipated. Muchless skill at organizing papers and supporting and dealing withsentences and so forth.”

“any real sense of howmuch work is expected of them in college.”

lthough they had qualified for admis-sion to UCLA, they were unprepared for instructors’ expecta-tions about college coursework.

The complications are perhapsmost evident at community colleges, where the diversity of stu-dents is most pronounced, but occur at every level of higher edu-cation where students belong to previously excluded groups, in-cluding women, racial and ethnic minorities, and working-classstudents.

These indicators—both domestic and international—raisetwo critical questions. How is it that the percentage of the popu-lation with college degrees has stayed the same over the past fourde cades? And what accounts for the huge gap between individu-als’ aspirations to earn a college degree and the actual rates ofcollege completion

The expansion of the U.S. postsecondary system seems evenless successful when compared with that of other countries. It istrue that the United States, judged in relation to other membersof the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Develop-ment (OECD), claims a percentage of adults with college degrees—four- year and two-year combined—that looks relatively high.With the exception of Japan and Korea, where over 50 percentof twenty- three- to-thirty-four- year-olds have college degrees, theUnited States boasts one of the higher rates of college comple-tion (39 percent)

Although the community college sector is often treated as an ad-junct to U.S. higher education, it comprises the largest group ofdifferent types of accredited postsecondary institutions and con-stitutes the first stop for roughly half of today’s college students.

The mosthighly selective universities in the United States, for instance, areresponsible for only about 3 percent of the undergraduate stu-dent population.2

Top- ranked public universities and elite private col-leges have similarly dominated the attention of people who studyhigher education.

As the number of post-secondary students increased, so did the proportion of under-graduates who were enrolled at community colleges. Thus, theexpansion of higher education has produced a remarkable vari-ety in the types of postsecondary institutions as well as diversityin the kinds of students who attend them.

69 percent of twelfth graders intendto earn a baccalaureate degree, only 28 percent of twenty-five-to- thirty- four- year-olds hold baccalaureate degrees. 14

however, many end up leaving college beforecompleting any type of degree. In fact, the proportion of stu-dents seeking a college degree (either an associate’s or a bache-lor’s) who graduate within ten years is only slightly above half.

Are colleges prepared to edu-cate today’s students?

the current college-going pop-ulation exhibits a great many nontraditional characteristics,which may include finan cial in de pen dence, part-time college at-tendance, delayed enrollment after high school, full-time em-ployment, and time spent caring for depen dents

Today’s typical college student is almost aslikely to attend a two-year college as a four-year college. Evenwhen students do go directly from high school to a four-yearcollege, they may attend two or three different colleges beforeobtaining a degree and take breaks or interrupt the course ofstudy for extended periods in moving between colleges, beforereturning to school.

he “tradi-tional” trajectory, of enrolling as a full-time student in a residen-tial college and attending for four years continuously, no longerrepresents the norm.

“It seems to me that we’vebeen complaining about this forever, though. I can go back towhen I was first hired, and people were complaining about thequality of students not holding up. So I don’t know.”

The typical student has at least a twenty-hour-a- weekjob, which is very discouraging—it’s reality, but it’s very discour-aging, because it cuts into my concept of what the requirementsof a college education are; the requirements of a college educa-tion are that you devote all or most of your time to that—that’syour job. And of course you get a group of kids who have noconception of what college is all about . . . who don’t understandlearning or the goal of learning.”

major themes of this book is the frequentdisconnect between college professors’ expectations of studentsand students’ actual performance.

6 percent of the U.S. populationgraduated from high school, and 4 percent of the population at-tended college. Today, the high school graduation rate is closeto 90 percent, and around 45 percent of eighteen-to-twenty-one- year- olds attend college. Furthermore, college going is notlimited to eigh teen- to-twenty-one-year-old students. Currently,around twelve hundred community colleges have over six mil-lion students enrolled in credit-bearing courses.

they would enter “terminal” programs designed toprepare them for the mid-skilled professions.

The junior colleges could offer academic-transfer courses to the most academically able students, whowould eventually receive bachelor’s degrees at four-year colleges.

president of the University of Chicago, andDavid Starr Jordan, president of Stanford University, worriedabout preserving their universities’

First, a student cantransfer to a four-year college as a sophomore or junior, aftertaking the required coursework. Second, a student can earn anassociate’s degree based on transferable courses. Third, a studentcan earn an associate’s degree in certain occupational fields with-out earning transferable credits. Although associate’s degrees donot hold forth the same promise of economic benefits as a bach-elor’s degree does, they do offer advantages over a high schooldiploma when it comes to finding employment. 4

To its students, the community college of-fers a vari ety of options: credit courses and degree programs thatare transferable to four-year colleges, subbaccalaureate degreesand cer ti fi ca tion for a range of occupations, and noncredit adult

Although the com-munity college is the bottom tier of a strictly differentiated sys-tem of higher education, it plays a central role in granting accessto that system

Harvard,for instance, symbolizes academic rigor in such films as GoodWill Hunting (1997) and Legally Blonde (2001).