The Impacts of Neoliberalism on US Community Colleges: Reclaiming Faculty Voice in Academic Governance

Focusing on community colleges as a unique structure within American higher education, this text investigates the specific ways in which these institutions have been impacted by a global increase in neoliberal education policies. Analyzing the effects neoliberalism has had on community colleges, the text charters discourse relating the erosion of faculty voice in academic governance, and decision making; the vocationalization of curriculum; and the impact that these factors have had on the ability of community colleges to provide students with an education that supports a democratic society. Exposing a movement away from the historical aims of community-based education, the text evidences a hijacking of community colleges to serve the objectives of the corporate elite. There has been a decline in community college faculty engagement in shared governance and their loss of recognition as academic and curricular leaders, and the book discusses the potential for redistribution of decision-making power back toward faculty. This text will be of great interest to graduate and postgraduate students, academics, professionals and policy-makers in the fields of Higher Education, Education Policy and Politics, Sociology of Education, Higher Education Management and Education Politics.