...Q&A
John Roueche (left) meets with former
colleague and leadership program graduate
AACC President and CEO Walter G. Bumphus
at the association’s 2011 annual convention.
inventive, a lot more creative,
a lot more entrepreneurial, a
lot more collaborative, corroborative—whatever the
words. We’re going to have to
partner with school districts,
health providers, businesses,
and industry, if we have any hope of
maintaining the quality that we expect
from our institutions.
registration and assessment and
placement and financial aid and
developmental education and
general education is going to be
a lot more difficult than simply
setting the bar higher.
JOURNAL: Give me an example.
JOURNAL: With the focus shifting on
campuses from access to success, can
community colleges do for completion
what they have already done for
equity?
JOURNAL: So what’s the answer? Is it
performance-based funding? Success
metrics?
ROUECHE: Every business, every
industry, every hospital, every school
district, spends millions of dollars
nationally on continued education and
continued job training. The college
ought to be the workforce provider for
people in any community who don’t
have the skills to get these jobs. It is a
long way from where we are to where
we want to be.
ROUECHE: One of the great things
community colleges have accomplished
is the access equity opportunity. The
problem is that access and equity and
opportunity have not a thing to do
with quality or excellence.
Expectations are high with the
completion agenda. But the hour-by-hour, day-by-day work of getting these
students through orientation and
ROUECHE: I wrote the very first book
that used the word “accountability”
in the title. I’ve got no issue with
transparency and people putting their
goods on the table. I think we all need
to do that. But it’s a lot more difficult
if you’re working at a community college. These universities—and I work at
one of the elite ones—we do our best
to recruit the best and the brightest
and the most privileged. These students should do very well because they
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