A different way to carry out placement is to give occupational instructors the responsibility for placing students. This has the potential advantage of having individuals who are the most knowledgeable about the particular program and students conduct placement and of ensuring that information from employers gets back to those who teach in occupational programs. In some cases, it is clear that this kind of placement does happen: At the area vocational schools in Cotooli instructors are supposed to do placement, and several other instructors gave numerous examples of the ways they place students with former employers and other community contacts.
However, the majority of instructors seem to do little placement. For example, one community college placement director estimated that only five to ten percent did any placement, largely part-time faculty "working out in the field that have connections." Another commented on "the line" dividing placement from instructors[47] and went on to blame workloads: "People are just overwhelmed, and something like placement is sort of way in the background."
Even when instructors claim to be a source of employment, their methods of placing students sound haphazard and they often acknowledged that they place relatively few. For example, a computer instructor in the Rosefield area said,
Because of the fact that we're out in the community, we'll mention positions that we see. And I go to a very large church, and I have a lot of friends who are in the computer field, and . . . yeah, we act as a conduit.
But he also admitted that he placed only three or four students a year--"not a great number." In addition, responses to questions about local employers were often vague.[48] Several admitted to virtual ignorance about employment opportunities. One accounting instructor in a well-regarded Palmdale community college admitted,
I don't know how firms perceive an accounting degree from [my institution]. People know that a year or two of accounting classes will only get you so far. A community college is a community college, I believe.
Some instructors think that placement is not their responsibility (as do many educational institutions as a whole); some, not surprisingly, come from outside the area and are unfamiliar with local employers, while others have so little experience in industry that it is unreasonable to expect them to be knowledgeable about the local labor market.
A different kind of structural problem impedes the ability of some instructors to be active in placement--one that is similar to the problem affecting placement offices. Successful placement requires differentiating students, recommending only the best and most motivated; but the best teaching requires that instructors not differentiate among students, that they devote as much (or more) time to weak students as to the strongest, that they concentrate on the strengths of students rather than on their weaknesses. Since the teaching role and the screening role are antithetical, some instructors are reluctant to do more than provide information to students. As one drafting instructor described his placement efforts:
In one of the advanced drafting classes, we have a job board, and . . . I hate picking. That's the first thing the business people want--"Hey, pick me somebody. Who have you got who's good?" And I don't like doing that. So [students] pretty much know, since they're older, they know when they're ready. And so any time there's a job, I'll say, "Hey, here's the data"--name, rank, serial number, type of job, salary range, etc. And then we'll put it up on the board.
As a matter of principle, however, he refuses to engage in "picking."
In general, relying on occupational instructors to provide placement would require a consistency of interest and effort and of experience and knowledge about local employment that would be difficult for community colleges to ensure[49]; placement is simply not part of the job description for community college instructors. The result is that this approach to placement results in only idiosyncratic success.
[47] The same individual acknowledged that the problem of internal divisions within community colleges was more extensive than its manifestation in placement and that counselors and instructors are similarly divided. This is part of the larger problem of the community college as an "archipelago" of disconnected activities described in Grubb and Kraskouskas (1992).
[48] See Questions 25 and 31-33 in the questionnaire for education providers in Appendix A.
[49] This problem is no different in community colleges than it is in other educational institutions. The attempt to place the responsibility for related services on instructors--whether placement or counseling or outreach to parents--has never worked well at any level of the educational system, so it has always been easier to establish independent offices (like placement offices and counseling centers) instead.