There remains a serious question about the wisdom of integrating occupational and academic education: Is this kind of reform likely to benefit students, given the need for specialization at the postsecondary level and the substantial job-specific requirements in certain fields? After all, one could argue that the high school should be the appropriate place to learn general and academic competencies, while postsecondary education should be reserved for specialization. Given the inevitable difficulties of integrating different elements of the curriculum, perhaps the notion of integrating occupational and academic education is one that ought to be confined to high school but abandoned at the postsecondary level.
However, there are several a priori reasons for thinking that integration will benefit postsecondary students.[40] At the most general level, several forms of integration are testimony to community colleges paying special attention to the needs and interests of occupational students. The applied academic curricula, the multidisciplinary courses of Model 5, and the tandem courses and clusters all provide examples where faculty have tried to mold content to the interests and needs of students with occupational goals rather than sending them to conventional academic courses that might not hold their attention. These are important steps toward developing student-centered curricula, an approach with the potential to enhance motivation and learning.
In terms of the skills that students learn, the dominant complaints from employers about their workers is not that their job-specific skills are deficient, but that they lack more fundamental competencies including the ability to read and communicate at appropriate levels and various higher-order capacities. This view emerges in part from national commission reports writing in grand generalities (see, for example, Committee for Economic Development, 1985; Carnevale, Gainer, & Meltzer, 1990; SCANS, 1991). In part, surveys of firms confirm the importance of skills other than technical skills: The Committee for Economic Development (1985) surveyed 438 large businesses and six thousand small ones, and found that language skills including communication, work habits, the ability to get along and to work with little supervision were more important for entry-level positions than were technical skills. The Washington State Commission on Vocational Education (1985) surveyed 700 Washington businesses about the competencies desired by employers of individuals from community colleges and technical institutes, and found that work habits, language and communications skills, math and science, and interpersonal skills were just as important as technical skills. An analysis of health occupations--one of the most technically-demanding areas within postsecondary occupational education--found that employers in the San Francisco area considered the technical skills of community college graduates to be adequate, but their communicative skills weak (Hudis et al., 1991). In several other occupational areas, employers seem to look for evidence of motivation, the ability to work in teams, independence, and problem-solving abilities instead of technical skills[41]--capacities which might be best taught with an appropriate mix of occupational and academic content, appropriately integrated so that students could see how general abilities are necessary in specific occupational settings.[42]
This argument is closely related to the position that students will be better-prepared for occupations over the long run, especially in a world of changing requirements and escalating skill demands, if they are broadly rather than narrowly educated. Indeed, this argument has frequently been made by those in community colleges and technical institutes to support the value of vocational education rather than short-term job training of the kind offered by the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA) and many welfare-to-work programs. This position has recently been seconded by the Commission on the Future of the Community College (1988): "If technical education programs are too narrow, if work cannot be a broadening experience, then the students may achieve only short-term gains." The Commission then went on to recommend "exploring new ways to combine technical and general studies throughout the undergraduate experience," and declared that "Community college faculty should take the lead in closing the gap between the so-called `liberal' and the 'useful' arts," particularly by developing "up-to-date programs that integrate the core curriculum and technical education" (p. 21).
A third and different rationale for integration is the motivational one. Many occupational instructors reported special difficulties in getting their students to take academic courses, including those required in the general education sequence; students complain of the irrelevance of these courses and tend to drop out, making it more difficult to obtain certificate or Associated degrees.[43] However, instructors in integrated approaches report higher levels of motivation, as students come to see the applicability of academic material. There is even some evidence of lower dropout rates, especially in the tandem and cluster courses of Model 6 and in the remedial programs of Model 7.
In addition, there is now a current of feeling--and even some research--suggesting that learning many capacities in context is a superior method of learning, compared to the conventional practice of teaching reading, writing, math, or science as abstract bodies of skills and facts disconnected from their applications. The widely cited recommendations of the Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (1991)--"that teachers and school must begin early to help students see the relationships between what they study and its applications in real-world contexts," that "the most effective way of teaching skills is `in context'" (p. 19)--should apply to community colleges and technical institutes as much as they do to the K-12 system. Indeed, one convention about teaching adults is that instructors ought to clarify the applications of their subjects (see, for example, the literature reviewed in Grubb et al., 1991, pp. 60-62)--a recommendation that is made easier when academic instructors have occupational colleagues to whom they can turn for examples, related issues and problems, and projects.
Indeed, there is even some evidence from our interviews that integrated programs change teaching methods, in precisely the ways recommended by the advocates of contextualized approaches. The shift to using issues and themes of greater interest to occupational students is one example; and some instructors whom we interviewed claimed that they have changed their teaching methods to make greater use of project and occupationally oriented problems, in which students are more active participants. Many integrated courses and curricula include statements of purpose indicating that they are moving away from the straightforward transmission of facts and figures, and towards a form of teaching in which students are more active in constructing meaning and interpreting issues of importance to them. For example, the cross-cutting themes used in LaGuardia's Advanced Business Cluster, the greater use of collaborative teaching methods in pairs and clusters, the introduction of novel content in the air conditioning program at Cedar Valley College, and the statement about general education at Diablo Valley College that such requirements will "help you make meaning from your encounters with the world" are all cases of more active teaching than is conventionally the case.
A somewhat different benefit is one related to career choice. Many programs have incorporated modules or units which can be considered career exploration, sometimes as part of an applied communications course, sometimes as part of an introductory course in remedial programs linked with occupational programs, sometimes in multidisciplinary courses or (rarely) associated psychology courses, and sometimes simply in initial courses like "Introduction to Business" or Introduction to Health Careers." These units are responsive to the observation that many community college students enter not knowing what they want, or what occupations might be appropriate for them. While the counseling and guidance staffs of community colleges provide some services for such individuals, integrating career information into courses is another and potentially more powerful approach, since it integrates career information with job-specific skills and contextualizes information about occupational options.
Another benefit to students of integration stresses the nonvocational purposes of education. While the moral and humanistic rationales for education often seem submerged in our utilitarian age, nonetheless a persistent stream of commentary has urged that occupational programs include these aspects too, lest they produce "technopeasants"[44] who are technically qualified but otherwise unable to participate in society in any but the most primitive ways. To cite the Commission on the Future of Community Colleges again,
We also acknowledge that the utility of education and the dignity of vocation have important value, not just for those enrolled in general and transfer studies. Only by placing emphasis on both can all students help in the building of community. . . . Students in technical studies should be helped to discover the meaning of work. They should put their special skills in historical, social, and ethical perspective. Those in traditional arts and sciences programs should, in turn, understand that work is the means by which we validate formal education. (pp. 20-21)
Such a view lends particularly strong support to the multidisciplinary courses described under Model 5, as well as to more conventional uses of general education.
Several benefits of integration are relatively indirect. One of these is the collaboration among faculty that integration encourages. Many instructors we spoke with acknowledged that teaching is usually quite isolated, and they welcomed the contact with other faculty that tandem courses, clusters, and Writing Across the Curriculum fosters. As a dean responsible for a remedial learning community commented,
It has brought instructors together in a new way. They have to co-plan the program. Assignments are structured so that they build upon one another. The content has been developed to correspond with other work being done. That builds a synergy effect. We get more accomplished and make better progress. The instructors love it. It pulls them away from the isolation they've experienced. They didn't all like it going into the planning, but all have ended up being real fans of the program.
Of course, collaboration has its problems too, since it usually requires more time and some accommodation to different points of view compared to conventional teaching. The fact that collaborative teaching requires faculty to go outside their fields of expertise also leads to some discomfort. But part of the problem is simply that instructors are not educated or encouraged to collaborate; institutions where collaboration became the norm would also be more supportive places to experiment with novel approaches to teaching. For those who have been able to work well with colleagues in developing integrated curricula, there are substantial personal benefits as well as benefits to students.
Another advantage of integrating occupational and academic instruction is that it helps move beyond the conception of the course as a basic unit of postsecondary occupational education, and focuses more on a sequence of courses and related competencies. Within community colleges (as in high schools), there is a well-known pattern in which students take courses in what appears to be a relatively random pattern, rather than following a coherent sequence--a practice sometimes referred to as "milling around" (Grubb, 1989). Various institutions have taken steps to minimize such unfocused coursetaking, including elaborate student tracking systems to keep students on a course they have set for themselves (Roueche & Baker, 1987, chap. III; Palmer, 1990) and counseling systems (like California's matriculation initiative), solutions which elaborate services external to the classroom. Developing integrated courses, as in tandem and cluster courses, is a different tactic: It relies on instructors to develop coherence and forces students, through the device of enrolling in several courses simultaneously, to take more coherent programs. The expansion of clusters into learning communities also creates structures which should help students complete a program, since the learning community creates a network of peers and instructors with similar goals.
A final advantage of integrating occupational and academic education is also the loftiest: Integration can help bridge the distinct "islands" of activity within the community college as archipelago. The notion of pursuing integration wherever it is pedagogically appropriate is one way of preventing community colleges from being expedient collections of different purposes, with transfer, vocational, remedial, community service, and economic development missions coexisting but not interacting or reinforcing one another. There are, of course, many forms such bridges could take, but greater connections between occupational and academic components and between remedial and occupational segments would include a great majority of community college students.
Many benefits of integration are evidently indirect. They work not only by changing the curriculum and how it is taught, but also by improving collaboration among faculty and by changing the culture of an institution. The results of such changes take substantial time to accomplish, of course, but the benefits are substantial too. The results would be postsecondary institutions that are coherent learning communities motivating students and teaching them in the most effective ways, that provide a broad education for occupational students, and that prepare flexible individuals able to change as employment and labor markets require.
[41] This observation is based on NCRVE research in progress directed by Norton Grubb, in which researchers are interviewing employers and postsecondary education providers in four labor markets. A dominant finding is that most employers hiring for occupations which do not need a baccalaureate degree are not especially concerned with technical skills--which in many cases can be quickly learned--and instead put much more emphasis on experience. Community college credentials do provide individuals with greater access to occupations where they can gain experience and on-the-job training, and be promoted over time (Grubb, in press); but their mobility appears to be a function of their performance on the job rather than their formal education, and therefore may depend more on general competencies rather than narrowly technical skills.
[42] There is no reason to think that academic courses as conventionally taught help students learn interpersonal skills or problem-solving abilities because the dominant form of teaching--the lecture method, a variant of an approach we call "skills and drills"--usually ignores interpersonal skills and teaches a sequence of small sub-skills rather than integrated capacities like problem-solving. Therefore a simple substitution of academic courses for occupational courses might not improve these capacities either. What seems most appropriate is an integrated approach, as can happen in applied academics courses, expanded vocational courses, or tandem courses. The SCANS report resents an argument for such an approach to teaching in high schools, equally appropriate to postsecondary institutions.
[43] Although there is a convention within the community colleges that students enter to take a few occupational courses necessary for employment or promotion, the evidence suggests that only completion of certificates and Associate degrees improves employment and earnings (Grubb, in press). Since these results were developed from data on relatively young individuals, it is possible that older individuals returning to community colleges and technical institutes do benefit from a few courses, though we know of no evidence on this point.
[44] On the devastating image of the "technopeasant," see Hersh (1983) and Finn, Ravitch, and Fancher (1984), page 6. The latter volume is a general argument for the humanities in the high school, but many of its arguments apply equally well to higher education.