A Global Community’s CollegeManny Fernandez, New York Times, October 30, 2015
SUMMARY:
Longer Summary: This NY Times article by Manny Fernandez describes the trend of community colleges becoming global colleges (about 9% of all international students that come to the U.S. are in community colleges). The article focuses on the experiences of international students that attend classes in the Houston Community College (HCC) system, which has the highest number of international students among all community colleges in the country, approximately 5,200. HCC has made itself particularly enticing by offering affordable tuition so that students can complete two years of general studies at a reasonable price before transferring to a four-year institution for a degree. Much like Edmonds Community College, HCC sees international students spending a longer time on the completion of degrees because of additional English language instruction needed before taking college-level courses. In this article, HCC is also being called a global college because it has created satellite branches of its college abroad. In fact, HCC helped the country of Qatar establish its first community college in the capital city of Doha. Ms. Do, a refugee from Vietnam zeroes in on why a global community college would also be beneficial to local students by saying, “I sincerely believe by exposing our students and faculty to international linkages, we can prepare our students not just for a single career, but also for a global life of unpredictable velocity and volatility,” (qtd. in Fernandez).