On a community college campus in Baltimore, Maryland, a young Kenyan on a student visa is discovering new educational horizons and possibilities that will expand his knowledge, to benefit him when he returns to his homeland. Not far away, at another school in a Washington, D.C., suburb, a young Romanian-born student successfully pursues a career in business. On the other side of the world from the eastern United States, Sri Lankan, Thai and Chinese specialists in education contemplate the advantages that might accrue from an American-style two-year education program in their jurisdictions.

One hundred and one years after the first public community, or junior, college opened in the United States, the American model is being analyzed and adapted by representatives of educational systems and government ministry officials of other countries. At the same time, as the U.S. community college population has doubled since 1993, the percentage of students from other countries in attendance also has grown dramatically.

This two-pronged thrust -- serving both those who come in increasing numbers to the United States to study, and those abroad who wish to transplant the U.S. model on their soils -- is of vital importance these days, mirroring the increased significance of community colleges on the U.S. higher education landscape in general.

In a recent conversation, James McKenney, vice president for economic development and international programs of the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) -- representing more than 10 million students on more than 1,100 campuses -- reflected on this burgeoning global relationship.

At the outset, he pointed to the growing number of international workforce development partnerships -- citing such linkages as those between an Ohio state community college and the government of Tanzania; a two-year component of the New York State university system and Mexico; a community college in St. Louis, Missouri, and the ministry of education of Guyana; a two-year college in a Los Angeles, California, suburb and the University of Asmara, in Eritrea; and a school in Maryland and a medical college in Russia.

Ties such as these, McKenney noted, focus on a wide range of coursework -- from hotel management and nursing to information technology and the skills to operate waste water treatment plants. And they continue to blossom.

FROM OUR CONVERSATION

Q: What are the roots of this global interest in America's community college system?

A: You have to look at this from two perspectives. It was right after World War II that the community colleges here began their big growth spurt. So, with regard to people from overseas enrolling here as students, it happened around the 1960s and 1970s. They come in waves, basically by word of mouth. Someone has a good experience, and tells people back home about it. My wife works at a community college in Baltimore [Maryland] County that has a large number of students from Kenya. The school doesn't actively recruit, but the students keep coming. They send word back to families and friends that it's a good campus, a good environment, and others would be welcome. That's how the population grows. And unlike American students, who prepare for college by scouting out different schools, students from overseas rely on prior information and go with that, with what's familiar. And it's working.

In terms of the other side of the picture, when community colleges were created here, they were meant to be the first two years of the university experience for those who were thinking about continuing. But now, the comprehensive community college system has an occupational mission as well as a transfer role. That's tremendously important. So even though the students who come here from abroad may have as their goal transferring eventually to universities, when you speak with administrators and public policy coordinators from other countries, what draws them toward recreating the system in their land are the occupational and training aspects, our way of connecting with business and industry. They marvel at that. They wonder how we do it, how we link up with the economy.

Q: And policy makers and education ministry representatives continue to come here.

A: Absolutely. We just spent time with representatives from Korea. My understanding is that Sri Lanka is preparing to launch a community college system, and that Brazil and Venezuela are very serious about it as well. Indeed, we're beginning to see movement towards community colleges in Europe, which had been resisting it. Denmark, of course, has had a system somewhat like ours in place for over 100 years. The Netherlands hasn't, but now is working toward it. Canada has such a system, and Australia and New Zealand have developed them. Mexico is working to create a network of two-year technical colleges aligned with local industry, but is struggling a bit with structure. You find that in southern India, the Roman Catholic Church and state and local governments have set up dozens of small community colleges that offer courses such as carpentry and auto repair for the unemployed. Pakistan is interested in developing community colleges too. Israel and the United Arab Emirates have community colleges, and there's one in the West Bank as well. Taiwan has a system in place, and Thailand is planning one. We've been working with the Chinese, who are deeply interested in creating community colleges, also for training purposes, in fields like up-to-date agriculture and environmental preservation. For the Chinese, in particular, it's a way of democratizing education, and getting it out to the masses. They like the two-year structure, because it's less expensive and occupationally focused. That, absolutely, is the key.

Q: Tell me something about the process by which links are established between education specialists and government officials from overseas and the appropriate offices here. To begin with, what are they looking for?

A: In a sense, America is the father of the community college concept. But what you need to know, and what we tell them, is that we don't have the model -- we may have 50 models. So when they come here, they'll probably find something that works particularly for them. For example, in some countries, because of rigid controls, if a community college system isn't developed by and maintained within the existing university apparatus, it isn't going to happen. So they look at New York, Tennessee and Ohio, where community colleges are a part of the state university system. Other countries want to bypass that bureaucracy. For them, the independent community college systems of North Carolina, Florida, New Jersey, Arizona or Massachusetts are perfect models.

Q: How are the connections made? How do the sides come together?

A: Our association is well known, having existed for over 75 years. So word does get around. They contact us, and we assess, in general terms, their needs. Then we try to match them with the appropriate systems here, giving them choices and flexibility. For example, I got a call recently from a diplomat at the Embassy of India here in Washington, looking to set up an itinerary for a visiting educational specialist from the Indian government's Department of Science and Technology in New Delhi. We followed up on it by sending this representative to the places he needed to survey, and he was quite pleased with the results.

Q: What other aspects of our system that appeal to education experts overseas?

A: Another point to be made is that the average age of our community college students is 29. That means that the occupational mission means as much to the adult population as it does to the traditional college-age student. We're in an era of lifelong learning, driven by technology and the information age. Education is not a stair-step to knowledge, in which, when you reach the top, it's over. It's an escalator of knowledge. It keeps on moving forward. So you need institutions that are designed to provide booster shots along the way for your entire population -- a flexible menu of different kinds of degrees and credentialing. Today, people may get an associate [two-year] degree, and if they're in the field of information technology, may not need a four-year bachelor of arts degree. But they will have to go back for booster shots. And for that, they come to their local community colleges. And it's as true overseas, in many countries, as it is here. We've discovered that in this country, 29 percent of the non-credit students already have a degree. It may be even more than a baccalaureate [four-year] degree. It could be a Ph.D. They're coming back for refresher courses for enhanced competency, so they can continue to work successfully. And that's what is being noticed, and duplicated overseas more and more. So far it's true mostly in the industrialized West -- in the "further education" systems in the United Kingdom and Scotland -- which reflect the same kinds of pressures and needs we have here. It's happening in Germany too.

Q: Is it fair, or accurate, to say that lifelong learning is becoming the primary motivation these days for creating community colleges overseas?

A: Yes, for the most part -- the need to serve the population beyond the normal college years -- the adult education demographics. Generally speaking, in the developing world, specifically, it's recognized that the foundation knowledge has to be revisited. For example, quality control in modern manufacturing wasn't a major concern overseas a generation ago. Today, it's a big deal; you've got to minimize inferior manufacturing. How do you do that? Through quality control, which is largely mathematics-based. This means that people who learned elements of math at 18 or 19 that they didn't necessarily have use for at the time have discovered, in their mid-40s, that all of a sudden they need it. So before they can assume the principles of quality control, they must go back to beef up their forgotten mathematics skills.

Q: Let's go back for a moment to the student population from abroad in America's community colleges. You said before that, at least as far as your wife's school in Baltimore is concerned, there's no need to actively recruit, unless you want to significantly grow and/or diversify your international student population. That is what happened at Spokane (Washington) Community College, mostly with respect to countries in the Far East. And the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles has been attracting students from the Czech Republic after years of pursuing students from Taiwan and Korea. Do you know if this is becoming a familiar pattern?

A: I can't say categorically, one way or the other. I do know that our association just took representatives of 18 colleges to Taiwan, Korea and Japan for career fairs, college fairs -- to present the community college model by itself, rather than having the community colleges and universities featured side by side. I should also point out that certainly lots of community colleges in the interior of the United States would like to draw in more students from overseas. They're under pressure to internationalize their curriculum, to expose American students to the notion that they are connected to a worldwide economy. Having that diversity on campuses in middle America -- something that schools in Florida and other states on the coasts have experienced -- helps.

Q: The students who come here -- would you say that for the most part, they're primed to stay, or do they plan to return to their own countries and families?

A: That's a tough question. What they intend when they come, and what they do after four or five years here can be two different things. And it can shift, sometimes for very subtle reasons, like conditions back home or circumstances here. At the recent AACC convention, we honored, as "alumnus of the year," the Governor of Lagos. He had graduated from the community college system in Chicago, went on to university, became an accountant here, went to work for the oil companies back in Nigeria, and became part of the political structure there. That's an example of what happens. At the same conference, we honored an Egyptian-born alumnus who came to study at a community college in Detroit [Michigan]. He stayed. So some stay and some go home.

Q: Thinking about the opportunities our schools provide to recent immigrants, I wonder, are there other countries that are involved helping to educate their own immigrant groups?

A: Recently, we had a delegation here from Haarlem, in The Netherlands. They're facing considerable immigration from southern Europe and the Middle East. They've never had it to the degree it exists now, and they're wrestling with how to deal with it in terms of educating these new groups.

In that regard, I have to point out something else, in terms of how we deal with recent immigrants to America, that's terribly important. The colleges here -- with open access -- invariably encounter people where they are, including in terms of their language fluency. We have numbers of people coming in, from one country or another, who happen not to be fluent even in their native language. So we have to teach them their own language before they learn English and before they begin to matriculate in the regular course structure. That's also what the Dutch are dealing with today, with respect to newcomers from the Middle East.

Q: To sum up, then, what do you foresee developing in the near future in terms of the relationship between America's community colleges and the education sector abroad?

A: At the recent urging of our board, I think we are going to be more aggressive in seeking linkages with other countries and organizations that desire information on community-college-like modeling, even creating memoranda of understanding with these other organizations -- such as those we're working on now with Denmark and Germany. Overall, I think it's safe to say that the relationship will continue to strengthen and to grow.

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Michael J. Bandler is a writer with the Office of International Information Programs of the U.S. Department of State.

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