A Social-Justice Agenda for Community College
Incoming chancellor for California’s community college system Eloy Oakley discusses expanding access to traditionally underserved communities as an economic imperative for the state and nation in a September 30, 2016, article in The Atlantic. Here’s an excerpt:
Oakley, who is himself a product of the system and a first-generation college student who grew up in a family where higher education was not the expectation, is under no illusion that California’s community colleges alone can close the racial and socioeconomic educational attainment gaps that plague the state. But Oakley, who will be the first Latino to hold the position, wants California’s 113 community colleges to see eliminating the inequity and opportunity disparities that create those divides as part of their shared responsibility.
“I don’t think there is a greater equalizer than California community colleges in terms of the ability to take someone from a community where college hasn’t even been thought of and transform that individual and give them the opportunity to create a family that now thinks about college as an expectation,” he said.
Read the complete article, “A Social-Justice Agenda for Community College,” on The Atlantic’s website.