In seeking to explain why faculty are or are not linked to the labor market, it is reasonable to postulate a set of individual and institutional factors that we would expect to influence the behavior of any individual instructor. In an economic framework, for example, we might consider faculty to be rational actors deciding how to allocate their time and effort subject to a set of constraints on their time and activities, including those imposed by their institution. In this kind of simple model, faculty connectivity would be a function of the perceived importance of such linkages to their own and the college's interest, the information they have on the labor market, the opportunities they have to share such information with professional colleagues, and the support for such activities they receive from their college. An alternative socio-psychological framework would similarly stress the importance of individual and institutional characteristics, faculty attitudes, and institutional climate in explaining faculty linkages to the labor market. While we do not conceptually develop any particular model or framework in this paper, both approaches imply that a similar set of factors--individual and institutional characteristics--underlie faculty-labor market linkages.
First, an individual faculty member's status--full-time/part-time, and teaching field--will be important. Many faculty are hired as part-time lecturers and have only temporary, and weak, connections to the institution. Community colleges employ faculty in a wide array of teaching fields and serve a number of different goals, ranging from preparing recent high school graduates for transfer to baccalaureate institutions to assisting recent immigrants in mastering basic English. It makes a difference whether the instructor teaches automotive transmission or American history. Many academic programs seem far removed from the world of work, and some vocational programs may be more employment-specific than others. We would expect faculty to vary in the priorities assigned to their duties, including linking to the labor market.
Second, the extent to which individual faculty are linked will be influenced by the institution within which they operate. For example, in order to integrate labor market concerns into curriculum, faculty need sufficient information on labor market trends and the needs of employers, and information on new pedagogical techniques and curriculum changes demanded by ongoing state and federal reforms. This may depend on the type of labor market in which the college is located, the extent to which administrators provide resources to faculty, and the extent to which faculty cooperate with each other. Faculty require assistance from their institution in terms of time, professional development, and other incentives to engage in high level of effort connecting behaviors. The remainder of this section discusses these issues, and we return to them in the section entitled, "Explaining Faculty-Labor Market Linkages."
Faculty status as full-time or part-time is expected to influence connectivity. Community colleges typically employ a large number of part-timers who hold secondary jobs outside of teaching. These faculty have a direct link to the labor market. In fact, one of the reasons two-year schools have always utilized a large number of part-timers is that "part-time specialists have `more expert knowledge' than full-time generalists" who "bring an up-to-the-moment perspective to their teaching" (Eells, 1931, quoted in Cohen & Brawer, 1989, p. 75). Gleazer, president of the AACJC from 1958 to 1981, argued that the community college was the institution "capable of serving as a connector by virtue of its students and staff members, who frequently work at other jobs in the community" (quoted in Cohen & Brawer, 1989, p. 257). On the other hand, such faculty have relatively weak ties to their institution. They may not have offices on campus, participate in institutional decisionmaking, and they have fewer formal qualifications than full-timers. Thus, the opportunity to use their labor market linkages to strengthen community college education may be limited. Full-time faculty have stronger institutional ties, but may have limited linkages with other local employers.
An instructor's teaching field will clearly influence the opportunities and incentives to have connections to the labor market. Most occupational programs have formal advisory committees through which faculty interact directly with local business and industry representatives.[9] Similarly, faculty are likely to be concerned about the direct placement of their students into jobs and, consequently, care about the quality of the graduates they send out into the labor market. Within vocational fields, we might also expect differences given that some programs are closely tied to a particular industry (e.g., nursing) while others are more general (e.g., business, technology). Academic faculty, by contrast, are further removed from these considerations. We should expect, therefore, differences in connectivity among faculty by teaching field.
A related point is that the professional and institutional climate within which faculty operate is likely to be important. Professional connectivity among postsecondary instructors would seem critical for dissemination of up-to-date information on changing labor market needs, legislative demands, new teaching techniques and curriculum innovation. The extent to which academic and vocational teachers interact may also be important given continuing integration of curricula, more joint classes and team teaching and the broader conception of vocational education being emphasized by policymakers. Within an institution, there may be limited opportunities for interaction among faculty. Grubb and Kraskouskas (1992), in their study of the integration of academic and vocational curricula called for by recent federal reforms, describe the community college as "an archipelago of independent islands, each serving a different mission but with limited communication among them" (p. 39). They found considerable evidence of pervasive disciplinary specialization and an important status difference between academic and occupational faculty. [10]
A broader point concerns the nature of the community college professoriate. Several authors have noted the lack of collective identity built around a shared responsibility for the curriculum: faculty simply teach courses (Cohen, 1973; Cohen & Brawer, 1977; Palmer, 1994). The idea of labor market connectivity which is assumed to be important by proponents of the development of a school-to-work system is simply one of many calls for increased faculty involvement in important institutional obligations: for example, Atwell, Sullins, and Vaughan (1982) argued that faculty should be more involved in community service programs, and Vaughan (1991) argued that faculty members should produce out-of-class scholarship. While this lack of community of practice among two-year college faculty is not an explanation for why faculty do or not build linkages to the labor market--indeed it demands an explanation itself--the issues are certainly related to it. The inability to forge a professional identity and a sense of shared professional obligation outside of the classroom may be reflected in the prevalence or otherwise of faculty-labor market linkages.
Individual faculty need to have the tools to engage in building links to the labor market. This includes not just information, but the skills and resources necessary to undertake such activities. For example, there is a common view that vocational teachers, because they are often drawn directly from industry and many are part-time, have serious deficiencies in their pedagogical preparation; there are continual calls for "better preparation of vocational faculty" (NAVE, 1994, p. 7). Professional development at community colleges is widely regarded as weak. Hoerner, Clowes, Lichtman, and Allkins (1991) found in a national survey that 28% of faculty said professional development was "irrelevant," although they also reported that with a supportive college leadership professional development can advance institutional growth. In general, the opportunities for additional training are limited to traditional methods like campus workshops and conferences, and the incentives which institutions are able to provide faculty given their formal structures are limited to travel, tuition, and sabbatical leave. Grubb and Kraskouskas (1992) found that most innovators in the integration of academic and vocational curricula acted without tangible institutional support.
In order to build linkages, faculty need to be informed about current labor market trends. The degree to which they have such information will depend in part on their own efforts and in part on their college administration, colleagues on the faculty, and the interest of local businesses in working with the college. These, in turn, are likely to be influenced by, for example, the physical location (proximity to viable economic base), historical development and mission of the college, connectivity among faculty, college governance structure, legal and funding environment in which the college operates, and the administration's view as to the importance of such information.
This discussion highlights the importance of several factors that underlie our analyses of our survey and case study data. In particular, it suggests the significance of the instructor's discipline and full-time/part-time status. It also suggests that institutional features such as location, mission, governance structure, and resources will play an important role in explaining why some faculty undertake linking activities and some do not.
[10]Little and Threatt (1992) found strong separation of academic and vocational instructors at the high school level.