Leaders
Reflect on Urban College Then and Now
Boston
institution preceded, became rooted in, 'War on Poverty'
by
Natalie C. Holmes, Community College Times
Aug.
20, 2004, marks the 40th anniversary of Economic Opportunity
Act (EOA), the centerpiece of President Lyndon Johnson's
"War on Poverty" and the law that created locally
governed agencies that still today orchestrate programs
and services to help the poor get a leg up.
Two years prior to the passage of the EOA, however, Action
for Boston Community Development (ABCD), that city's community
action agency (CAA), already was laying the foundation for
what has become a shining light among efforts to make higher
education more accessible for disadvantaged students - especially
the working poor - and increase their chances of success.
Urban College of Boston (UCB), which began as an adult education
program within ABCD, is believed unique among community
colleges for these origins. Last year, the college celebrated
its 10th anniversary of offering fully accredited degree
programs, which now include early childhood education, human
services administration and general studies as well as certificates
and continuing education.
Ninety-three percent of UCB students are women; their average
age is 37; and 78 percent have incomes below $20,000 in
a city with one of the highest costs of living in the nation
- even though 86 percent work full time. Increasingly, they
are second-language learners as well, so the college now
offers content-based instruction in Spanish and Cantonese
for entry level courses.
"They are on a mission to improve their lives,"
Urban College President Linda Turner said of her students
as she was finalizing commencement ceremonies in June.
"They have been out of high school for 10 to 15 years
and are in low-income positions ... they come back against
all odds," Turner said. "They are the most motivated
students I have ever seen," said the president, a pioneer
herself when she graduated from Virginia Polytechnic Institute
in 1966 in that college's first class of black women.
More than 100 candidates received an associate degree or
certificate this spring, to the delight of more than 800
family and friends who attended the event. "We're going
to have to get a bigger place next year," Susan Kooperstein,
ABCD public affairs director, said as she recalled the graduation.
Former graduates have gone on to win seats and even teaching
positions at some of the area's most prestigious colleges,
including the grandfather of the Ivy League, Harvard University.
"Throughout the history of the college the mission
has remained steadfast ... to connect [the students] with
real jobs and upward mobility," said ABCD President
and CEO Bob Coard, who was there in the beginning, a leader
in the drive to establish the Urban College.
The program received Ford Foundation backing and was recognized
as a model for postsecondary access in an urban setting
by such influential educators as Arthur Levine, now president
of Teachers College at Columbia University. Nevertheless,
the road to expand to a full-fledged college was sometimes
bumpy, Coard recalled.
While some four-year institutions, such as Endicott College
on Boston's prestigious north shore and Simmons college,
were instrumental in developing bridge programs to help
UC13 students further their education, and some local community
college leaders were supportive, others worried that the
city could not support another two-year institution. Advocates
argued, however, that other community colleges had abandoned
the inner city and that neighborhood-based institutions
in Boston's fiercely ethnic enclaves such as predominantly
white Charles Town and predominantly black Roxbury were
not as accessible, or did not feel as welcoming, to a diverse
array of students. They pressed on for an urban college
that would be located in the central city and "draw
from every neighborhood, on neutral ground accessible by
subway and bus,” Coard said.
“The community colleges weren’t that happy about
us setting up shop," Coard said. "The public hearing
was a little spicy," he recalled. "I think it's
changed. They recognize that we have a niche. We have people
who would never even think of going to college and people
who probably would not succeed in their colleges,"
Coard said, noting that UCB's one-on-one approach remains
a hallmark of its success, "like a family approach
to education."
Whether carried out in a Head Start setting or in the college,
education is really as much about "acculturation"
as it is about academics, Coard argues - about what American
society needs and what it's going to pay for. "Poverty
for a sustained period causes a different culture of continuously
repeated responses that are self-defeating," he says.
In declaring a "War on Poverty" in 1964 President
Johnson argued that "very often a lack of jobs and
money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The
cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens
a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack
of education and training, in a lack of medical care and
housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live
and bring up their children." In fighting the war,
"our chief weapons in a more pinpointed attack will
be better schools, and better health, and better homes,
and better training, and better job opportunities to help
more Americans, especially young Americans, escape from
squalor and misery and unemployment rolls where other citizens
help to carry them," Johnson said.
Besides housing Urban College at its headquarters, ABCD
has a $110 million annual budget used to assist some 100,000
people each year through a network of neighborhood-based
programs and services. These include Head Start, child
care,
housing, aid for the disabled and elderly, case management,
counseling and job training. Looking out on his slice
of
America, Coard reflects on whether we've made progress
since 1964. "A little bit," he says, noting
that the pace is a succession of three steps forward and
two steps
back.
Today, ABCD is more sophisticated than in 1964 in its approach
to preparing people for employment - partnering with Northeastern
University, for example, to obtain current labor market
data, he says. At the same time, climbing out of poverty
is about education that will allow students to transition
when the "jobs change and companies lay people off,"
Coard says. "People won't stop being poor unless they
have new skills," he said, "both personal skills
and job skills."
"We did it gradually," he says of the college's
40-year history. "We really worked at it, planned it
and used our experience" working with the disadvantaged.
"We helped students with their life problems so we
could keep them in school and they could graduate."
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