Comparison of Community College Organizations

Higher Education

Higher Education is being hit by winds of change from every direction: States are enforcing new accountability laws and cutting funding; the values gap between college faculties and students is widening; the demand for distance education is growing; and technology is revolutionizing teaching and cheating methods (Walden University and The Chronicle of Higher Education, 2010). Because access to sources of current information on teaching and learning in higher education have never been more important, I decided to compare 3 organizations that serve community colleges: The Association for Continuing and Higher Education (ACHE), the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), and the League for Innovation in the Community College (LICC); all url’s can be found in References.

The missions of all three educational organizations -- the ACHE, AACC and LICC – are identical: They want to bring about social change by inspiring institutions of higher education to change. Institutional change is promoted through publications and opportunities for networking; all three organizations offer weekly, monthly and occasional publications, and yearly conferences, but only the ACHE publishes peer-reviewed articles in The Journal of Continuing and Higher Education, and only the LICC hosts an event specifically designed to facilitate networking among college employees, the Learning College Summit. Graduate students and college faculty and administrators who wish to work for educational and social change in these organizations will find that only the ACHE is notably accessible with institutional, professional and graduate student memberships; the LICC permits only institutions to join as members, and the AACC solicits institutional memberships but will allow individuals from non-member institutions to join. Though I am a member of the AACC because my employer, Northwest Arkansas Community College, is a member, I most appreciate the egalitarian membership policies of the Association for Continuing and Higher Education with its fee of only $12.00 for graduate students and $40.00 for professors; I fully intend to join.

References

American Association of Community Colleges. (2010). American Association of Community Colleges [website]. Retrieved from http://www.aacc.nche.edu/Pages/default.aspx

Association for Continuing and Higher Education.(2010). Association for Continuing Higher Education [website]. Retrieved from http://www.acheinc.org/

League for Innovation in the Community College. (2010). League for Innovation in the Community College [website]. Retrieved from http://www.league.org/index.cfm

Walden University and The Chronicle of Higher Education. (2010). Successfully navigating the changing landscape of higher education[webinar]. Retrieved from http://webmail.nwacc.edu/exchweb/bin/redir.asp?URL=https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp%26eventid=239637%26sessionid=1%26key=10C891B0D2F08E67C7825CF4F3F20D3E%26sourcepage=register