Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/70469

JaLCDOI : 10.14943/J.HighEdu.25.37

Community colleges in the United States are a pathway to opportunities for higher education for all, regardless of their high school grades. Many students from disadvantaged families go to community colleges with the hope of transferring to four-year universities to acquire diplomas, which opens up opportunities to find better jobs. However, for students with low GPAs, it is not easy to meet the requirements for transfer, and only a handful succeed. Clark (1960) maintained that community colleges perform the function of?cooling out,?which reduces the aspirations of students from poor families and provides them with a?soft?denial while maintaining their belief in the promise of upward social mobility through higher education. According to an analysis of research conducted by the American Sociological Association, in 2014, the majority of community college faculties understood that their work of mentoring disadvantaged students was a practice of social justice. This is the basis of their professional identity. There are no equivalents to American community colleges in Japan. Instead, some low-end, nonselective private universities accept students with low high school GPAs. In reality, anyone can enter, and a majority of the students can graduate without learning the academic knowledge necessary to find good jobs. They lack not only learning abilities but also knowledge of the middle-class culture that is needed to succeed in universities and in the real world after graduation. All faculties in Japan believe that research is the most important mission, and even the faculties of nonselective universities with poor research resources and opportunities concentrate their efforts on research and fail to help low-end students.