Unrelenting Change, Innovation, and Risk: Forging the Next Generation of Community Colleges [Hardcover]

Arguably, the nations community colleges have experienced more change in the last several years than they have over the prior 115 years of their existence. Rapid changes in technology, external pressures for accountability and student completion, aggressive competition from other higher education institutions (i.e., public, for-profit, and private), changes in enrollment demographics, as well as new economic, market, and operational models stand to completely disrupt this relatively young enterprise.

Unrelenting Change provides useful, practical examples for community college leaders as they seek to thoughtfully and strategically align their organization for the new dynamic in higher education. Furthermore, Unrelenting Change offers insights into the change process, including institutional assessment and readiness, consideration of cultural implications, strategic intentions toward innovation, as well as risk, failure, and success. Rather than perceiving change and disruptive innovation as merely happenstance, or luck, the author provides discernment into the topic so as to give community college leaders solid, guidance, if not improved odds, in undertaking this important, competitive edge for the future of their intuitions, and by extension, their students.

In this brief and provocative book, community college leaders, especially presidents, are warned that business as usual and a reliance on past achievements are not acceptable in our technology-driven, on-demand, uberized, participant-centric, shared economy. And, if community colleges dont embrace this new reality, they will become less relevant and students will seek their educational and training needs elsewhere. Phelan has brought his 35 years of professional experience, interviews with community college leaderslSè