مستخلص: |
This report examines the current state of community colleges in South Africa. A pilot study was designed to assess the state of thinking, practice, partnership, possibilities, programming, restructuring, and needs with regards to South African community colleges. Preliminary findings suggest that, where community colleges do exist, there is a strong sense that they represent powerful community, social and human resources development nodes that could promote the realization of FTE ideals as stated in government policy. At the same time, however, a number of capacity needs have also been identified in the community colleges subsystem, ranging from governance and management needs, program development needs, quality assurance and accreditation needs, to partnerships requiring urgent attention. This report is divided into three parts. Part 1 provides the framework, the basic issues in FTE, perspectives and ideas on community colleges, and other concepts that guided researchers' thinking as they prepared to undertake this phase of the research. Part 2 contains the basic findings from site visits to 9 colleges and from the survey questionnaires returned from 30 colleges. Part 3 contains conclusions and recommendations for action at the research and policy levels. (JA) |