Reviewed by:

• The Costs of Completion: Student Success in Community College by Robin G. Isserles
• Xiaodan Hu and Quortne Hutchings

In The Costs of Completion: Student Success in Community College, Robin Isserles reflects upon her role as a faculty member in sociology at the City University of New York and on her research on community college student success. In doing so, she introduces the concept of student sensibility and calls on community colleges to become authentic caring institutions. With broad audiences in mind, Isserles presents both empirical evidence and her personal experiences working directly with community college students. She argues that the narrow focus on completion measures as indicators of community college student success can further marginalize students who are in precarious situations. Rather, Isserles suggests that community college practitioners and researchers contextualize the student-centered experience within neoliberalism, “an economic, social, and political strand of capitalism characterized by a pro-business, limited government ideology” (Winslow, 2015, p. 204–205), and create learning environments in which students feel respected and cared for.

The first section of the book presents how the prevalence of neoliberal policies and practices within community colleges enforces market pressures that push public colleges to increase revenues, improve quality, and cut costs (Cannella & Koro-Ljungberg, 2017). Isserles’ observation closely aligns with current research on how the neoliberalization of the US higher education has a detrimental impact on the affordability, accessibility, and public image of higher education (e.g., Mintz, 2021; Winslow, 2015). Isserles explains the complex concept of neoliberalism using plain language and personal stories and illustrates how academic momentum-style initiatives and quantitative-driven data approaches unfairly define the goal of community college education as credential completion. Historically, community colleges have been underfunded despite disproportionately serving students who are racially minoritized and financially needy (Dowd et al., 2020). Under neoliberal policies and practices (e.g., enrollment management, return on investment calculation, consumerism in teaching and learning), underfunded community colleges are thus pressured to follow low-risk best practices to push for faster credential completion as the goal. The unpleasant reality is that, in both community college research and practices, the focus on serving students as consumers widgetizes students and shapes their community college experience to be “substandard” (p. 33). Isserles emphasizes the core mission of community colleges as engaging and supporting students through meaningful student–institution interactions rather than reducing the student experience to completion rates.

She also expresses concerns over “the making of a crisis” (p. 51) where philanthropies, researchers, and community college leaders are “singing out the same hymnbook” (p. 76), identifying retention and completion as the aspects to be addressed through student success interventions. In reality, she notes that student success interventions are often implemented [End Page 606] despite inconsistent empirical evidence and the lack of faculty input. This section is especially powerful in highlighting how student-centered higher education requires student affairs practitioners, faculty, and researchers to collaborate based on mutual trust and to advocate for their students.

Community college leaders often walk a tightrope between securing sufficient financial resources and meeting the diverse demands of students and other stakeholders (Nevarez & Wood, 2010). Isserles acknowledges the resource constraints community colleges face and explores how structural factors force these institutions to balance financial health and an open-access mission. This book does not explicitly discuss how neoliberal policies and practices can legitimize racist practices in community colleges as racialized organizations (Ray, 2019) or crowd out space for racially minoritized students on community college campuses. Yet, Isserles discusses how performance-based funding as a neoliberal state funding mechanism relies on meritocracy to allocate resources and can financially penalize minority-serving community colleges, exacerbating racial inequity (Jones et al., 2017). In this way, she provides a starting point for community college practitioners and researchers to be aware of the structural context of these institutions so they can advocate for equity-based resource distribution.

As community colleges reimagine their identity and multiple missions (Culp & O’Banion, 2021), Isserles interrogates the assumptions of the college completion crisis and proposes interventions and solutions. In...

审阅者：

• 完成成本：学生在社区大学取得成功作者：Robin G. Isserles
• 胡晓丹和 Quortne Hutchings

在《完成成本：社区学院学生的成功》一书中，罗宾·伊瑟尔斯反思了她作为纽约城市大学社会学教员的角色以及她对社区学院学生成功的研究。在此过程中，她引入了学生敏感性的概念，并呼吁社区大学成为真正的关爱机构。考虑到广泛的受众，伊塞尔斯提供了经验证据和她直接与社区学院学生合作的个人经历。她认为，狭隘地关注完成度指标作为社区学院学生成功的指标可能会进一步边缘化处境不稳定的学生。相反，伊塞尔斯建议社区大学从业者和研究人员将新自由主义中以学生为中心的经验置于背景中，新自由主义是“资本主义的一种经济、社会和政治趋势，其特征是亲商、有限的政府意识形态”（Winslow，2015，第 204 页） 205），创造让学生感到受到尊重和关心的学习环境。

本书的第一部分介绍了社区大学中新自由主义政策和实践的盛行如何施加市场压力，推动公立大学增加收入、提高质量和削减成本（Cannella & Koro-Ljungberg，2017）。Isserles 的观察与当前关于美国高等教育的新自由主义化如何对高等教育的负担能力、可及性和公众形象产生不利影响的研究密切一致（例如，Mintz，2021；Winslow，2015）。伊塞尔斯使用简单的语言和个人故事解释了新自由主义的复杂概念，并说明了学术动力式举措和定量驱动的数据方法如何不公平地将社区大学教育的目标定义为完成证书。从历史上看，尽管社区大学为少数族裔和经济困难的学生提供了不成比例的服务，但社区大学一直资金不足（Dowd et al., 2020）。在新自由主义政策和实践（例如，招生管理、投资回报计算、教学中的消费主义）下，资金不足的社区学院因此被迫遵循低风险的最佳实践，以推动更快地完成证书为目标。令人不快的现实是，在社区大学的研究和实践中，对作为消费者的学生的服务的关注使学生变得小众化，并使他们的社区大学体验变得“不合格”（第33页）。伊瑟莱斯强调社区大学的核心使命是通过有意义的学生与机构互动来吸引和支持学生，而不是降低学生的完成率。

她还对“危机的形成”（第 51 页）表示担忧，慈善机构、研究人员和社区大学领导者正在“唱出同样的赞美诗”（第 76 页），并将保留和完成确定为需要解决的方面通过学生成功干预。事实上，她指出，尽管经验证据不一致且缺乏教师投入，但学生成功干预措施仍然经常实施[第 606 页结束] 。本节特别有力地强调了以学生为中心的高等教育如何要求学生事务从业者、教师和研究人员在相互信任的基础上进行合作并为学生辩护。

社区大学领导者经常在确保足够的财务资源和满足学生和其他利益相关者的多样化需求之间走钢丝（Nevarez & Wood，2010）。伊瑟莱斯承认社区大学面临的资源限制，并探讨了结构性因素如何迫使这些机构平衡财务健康和开放访问使命。本书没有明确讨论新自由主义政策和实践如何使社区大学中的种族主义行为合法化为种族化组织（Ray，2019）或挤占社区大学校园中少数种族学生的空间。然而，Isserles 讨论了基于绩效的资助作为新自由主义国家资助机制如何依赖精英制度来分配资源，并可能在经济上惩罚少数族裔服务的社区大学，从而加剧种族不平等（Jones 等，2017）。通过这种方式，她为社区大学从业者和研究人员提供了一个起点，让他们了解这些机构的结构背景，以便他们能够倡导基于公平的资源分配。

随着社区大学重新构想其身份和多重使命（Culp 和 O'Banion，2021），Isserles 质疑了大学毕业危机的假设，并提出了干预措施和解决方案。在...