This volume steps outside entrenched habits of viewing the underprepared student as the central problem in improving student outcomes and highlights new questions and approaches that focus on addressing the reality of student needs. Chapters discuss:

1. Overview of Foundational Issues
2. Developing a Theory-Driven Model of Community College Student Engagement
3. Focus on the Front Door of the College
4. Organizational Culture as a Hidden Resource
5. Tiered Mentoring to Leverage Student Body Expertise
6. Do Institutional Attributes Predict Indidivuals' Degree Success at Two-year Colleges?
7. Information Networks and Integration: Institutional Influences on Experiences and Persistence of Beginning Students
8. The California Basic Skills Initiative
9. Institutional Efforts to Address Disadvantaged Students: An "Up-So-Down" View
10. Transmuting Resistance to Change

If community colleges can find the courage and willingness to appreciate that they are as underprepared for their students as these students are for the college-level curriculum, it would signal the beginning of a major paradigm shift and a new universe of possibilities.

This is the 144th volume of the Jossey-Bass higher education quarterly report series New Directions for Community Colleges. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.