ontradional students Community Colleges: The Conflict of Justice and Neoliberalism by John S. Levin is a critical inspection of how community colleges are serving nontraditional students in the context of an increasingly competitive and global society. In this discussion, Levin identifies two prominent themes he considers as conflicting and incompatible within community colleges: neoliberalism and justice. Neoliberalism within the educational context is defined by Levin as operation within a globalized and competitive market in which corporations and economic benefit are of primary concern to institutions of higher education. Levin’s definition of justice is drawn from John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, in which “society must give more attention to those with fewer native assets and to those born into the less favorable social positions” (as cited in Levin, 2007, p. 46). In the educational context, justice is attained by providing necessary support and assistance to those who are most marginalized. In the book, Levin argues that most nontraditional students do not receive justice either by the education they receive or from community college policy. The exceptions are those students who are supported by individuals who provide the personal attention they need to achieve parity.

The basis of Levin’s book is a qualitative study that took him to thirteen community colleges within nine states. Among the populations within the community colleges were a variety of nontraditional student types: minorities, students of low socioeconomic status, and adults. Levin gathered data via site visits and interviews with students, staff, administrators, and state officials. He makes extensive use of these interviews, providing numerous quotations to illustrate many of the individual characteristics and institutional policies represented within the book.

In the first two chapters, Levin sketches a brief overview of nontraditional students and the theoretical frameworks he employed to help understand this highly diverse population. The first chapter, outlining the definition of nontraditional students, includes three distinct frameworks: the trait framework, which classifies students by their different characteristics in order to determine their level of risk due to being nontraditional; the behavioral framework, which explores students qualitatively in order to better understand their part in the educational context; and the action framework, which examines students primarily through the policies and practices of those around the students, including faculty, staff, and administrators. For most of his analyses, Levin takes the approach of the action framework, noting that it will “identify both institutional and public policies that either thwart or enhance student access to and attainment in postsecondary education” (p. 39).

In the second chapter, Levin argues that the primary struggle for community colleges is between either providing justice to the students or thriving by a neoliberal ideology. According to Levin, “since the 1970s, the community college has assumed the role of the open-access, multipurpose, and socially democratizing institution. However, the institutions…[have] adopted a more business-like approach, pursuing revenues, working for increased productivity, and marketing [themselves] as a salvation for local and even state and national economies” (p. 57). In his view, by catering to the competitive and globalized ideologies emphasized by the federal and state governments, community colleges limit their abilities to provide justice to those students who are most marginalized within the educational context.

Chapters three through five provide in-depth exploration of the characteristics of nontraditional community college students. Chapter three presents the nontraditional students as having multiple identities. Compared to traditional students, many nontraditional students do not identify as closely with the institution that they attend, particularly in community colleges. Instead, they identify more closely among similar racial, ethnic, socioeconomic, and other groups. Levin notes that these differences between traditional and nontraditional students are evidenced by different goals and aspirations which necessitate more specific policies and practices for nontraditional students. Issues like technological deficiencies and noncredit enrollments further divide many of those marginalized students from many of the support services offered by community colleges.

The final three chapters of the book provide insight on the strategies and philosophies that community colleges can adopt in order to provide better support to nontraditional students. Challenging the claim that economic mobility is the primary advantage to a community college education, Levin instead argues that institutions focus on a more comprehensive “social mobility” (p. 138) that includes both academic attainment as well as cognitive and personal growth. Levin points out that even well-intentioned programs may unknowingly or unwillingly uphold neoliberal ideals that marginalize nontraditional students. At some level, according to Levin, the creation of justice instead relies on the acts of “autonomous agents” (p. 149). These actions are not associated with any formalized policies but instead are perpetuated by personal agendas and a concern for the common good. The disadvantage to relying on these actions is that they do not promote justice and equality for all community college students, especially nontraditional students. Levin also argues that community college concepts such as continuing education and lifelong learning perpetuate the marginalization of students, as these types of courses are typically categorized as developmental and remedial, and likewise do not constitute credit-bearing work, what most assume is meant by a postsecondary education.

I find Levin’s arguments are compelling. Community colleges are often pressured by local businesses and neoliberal-driven state and federal policies to provide an education that trains students in workforce-specific skills, which are often hard to transfer to new occupations or upper-level degree programs. The results of this pressure can be the limitation on opportunities for those individuals most marginalized within higher education. Even though Levin makes suggestions for improving the justice provided to nontraditional students, many of the potential solutions lack practical approaches to meeting these ends. Suggestions like improving federal and state financial support and providing universal access to all programs seem like good ways of providing justice to nontraditional students, but in the current economic context where institutions receive less state support, it seems unlikely that any of these solutions can be realized. This is not to say that the issues do not need to be addressed; rather, they should be approached in practical ways, starting with broad changes to policies and practices that better create support systems and avenues of access for marginalized students.

John S. Levin’s Nontraditional Students and Community Colleges provides a solid foundation for further research. Levin’s extensive use of interviews with students, administrators, and faculty provides practitioners with contextualized, anecdotal data about the specific needs of nontraditional students. Investigators will have a deeper understanding of the struggles of nontraditional students in community colleges, and the ways in which autonomous agents can foster the ideal of justice within these institutions. Levin implicitly suggests that community college administrators look to the ideals they hold the highest, assess whether those ideals are being upheld or supplanted by the current policies and practices, and adjust accordingly. Levin concludes that only by prioritizing justice can community colleges begin to assuage the economic divisions within society and provide a truly equal opportunity for marginalized students.

Collin Ruud is a Ph.D. student in Higher Education and a Letitia Walsh Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He currently works as a Graduate Research Assistant for the Office of Community College Research and Leadership and can be reached at cruud2@uiuc.edu