There are few books that I looked forward to reading as much as Cheryl L. Hyman’s Reinvention: The Promise and Challenge of Transforming a Community College System.
I’m not only a tenured faculty member at a community college, my journey from knucklehead high-schooler to the professoriate began at one in 1999. From both sides of the desk, I have seen the transformative power of public higher education. Naturally, I was excited to delve into a book that promised a vision for improving the effectiveness of a place that means so much to me.
Each year, more than 10 million people, roughly one-third of the nation’s undergraduates, are served by community colleges. These classrooms see a diverse constituency that includes individuals earning career credentials, students taking their first steps toward a bachelor’s degree and immigrants coming to learn English.
Any reasonable person would be on board for a plan to do this job better. Underperforming faculty teaching an obsolete curriculum, inefficient offices providing redundant services and despicably low completion rates are not achievements to be proud of.
These were just some of the challenges Hyman faced when she was appointed chancellor of the City Colleges of Chicago. With over 120,000 students spread across seven campuses and a budget over $650 million, the task of overseeing basic operations was enormous. Hyman ambitiously sought to do this and more. She promised to overhaul the entire system through a program called “reinvention,” and her experience through this tumultuous period is the basis of this book.
Rightly or not, others’ perception of Hyman’s sweeping reforms was filtered through the lens of her being a vice president for operations and business strategy at a Fortune 500 electric company, with no experience whatsoever working in higher education.
Outsiders can bring fresh approaches and push the envelope, but Hyman did not understand that the blowback she experienced was instigated by something more than what she dismisses as “the insularity of academia.”
