The publication of A Nation at Risk in 1983 triggered one of the most massive educational reform movements in the history of education. Over 100 national reports and 300 state reports have since been issued to stem the "rising tide of mediocrity" noted in the 1983 report. A wave of educational reform has swept across the country, and there have been many changes: increased requirements for high school graduation, increased standards for teacher certification, increased use of assessment, and increased use of technology. Unfortunately, there has been little or no increase in learning among the nation's students. In retrospect, the first wave of educational reform failed because the proposed solutions only tweaked the current system of education, correcting a process here, adding on a program there--an old pattern of educational reform now impotent in light of the profound changes occurring throughout American and world society.

The failure of this first wave of educational reform led some critics to call for the end of education as we know it. Lewis Perelman (1992) suggested, "The principal barrier to economic progress today is a mind-set that seeks to perfect education when it needs only to be abandoned" (p. 24). George Leonard (1992) added, "We can no longer improve the education of our children by improving school as we know it. The time has come to recognize that school is not the solution. It is the problem" (p. 26). And Stan Davis and Jim Botkin (1994) warned, "Over the next few decades the private sector will eclipse the public sector and become the major institution responsible for learning" (p. 16).

These criticisms and threats helped galvanize educational leaders into action. Armed with new insights from brain-based research, Continuous Quality Improvement processes, and new developments in technology, a second wave of educational reform emerged in the early 1990s, preparing the way for the most profound change in education since the invention of the book. The second wave places learning as the central value and the central activity of the educational enterprise. An American Imperative, published in 1993, ten years after A Nation at Risk, is representative of the reports that frame the issues for the second wave of educational reform. An American Imperative calls for the "redesign of our learning systems to align our entire educational enterprise with the personal, civic, and work place needs of the 21st century" (Wingspread Group on Higher Education, 1993, p. 19). The report goes on to say that "Putting learning at the heart of the academic enterprise will mean overhauling the conceptual, procedural, curricular, and other architecture of postsecondary education on most campuses" (Wingspread Group on Higher Education, 1993, p. 14). This new wave of reform is not tweaking a system to fix a few broken parts; it is a fundamental overhaul, destruction of much that is traditional and construction of much that is new.

The changes called for will not come easily to education, an institution described as "1,000 years of tradition wrapped in 100 years of bureaucracy" (Moe, 1994, p. 1). But islands of change are emerging across the higher education landscape, and those changes are increasingly evident in some of the nation's leading community colleges.

In this book, I have tried to provide a framework for the reform movements of the past decade and the emerging focus on learning. Chapter 1 is a review of the issues related to the first wave of reform and an analysis of the problems associated with the traditional architecture of education--the time-bound, place-bound, efficiency-bound, and role-bound models that characterize current educational institutions. Chapter 2 is a review of the issues that have emerged in the second wave of educational reform since 1990. The chapter contains perspectives on many sectors of higher education that hold in common the value of "placing learning first." The chapter ends with a review of forces of resistance to change as well as a review of the pressures that are forcing change. Chapter 3 illustrates how the current emphasis on learning is a reflection of earlier attempts to emphasize learning and cites examples from the Progressive Education Movement of the 1930s and 1940s and the Humanistic Education Movement of the 1960s. This key chapter proposes a new model of education for the community college that I call "the learning college," an institution designed to help students make passionate connections to learning. Six key principles that form the emerging definition and character of the learning college are described in detail.

Chapters 4 and 5 explain how to build a foundation for the continuing creation of the learning college. In chapter 4 the potential role of technology in creating the learning college is outlined for educators who are not technologically oriented. Chapter 5 builds further on the foundation by citing recent progress in learning research, outcome and assessment measures, and learning organizations--and by describing how this progress can be applied to the building of the learning college.

Chapters 6 through 11 are descriptions of how six of the nation's leading community colleges are beginning to grapple with changes leading toward more learner-centered institutions. Written primarily by the CEOs of the six institutions, these descriptions provide a realistic snapshot of the early developmental phases of the learning college concept.

Chapter 12 offers a practical guide for community colleges interested in launching a learning college initiative of their own. In the last several years, I have keynoted a dozen national and state conferences and dozens of individual community college conferences on the topic of the learning college. In every case, college leaders and rank-and-file staff want to know how to get started and what to do. This final chapter, gleaned from the experiences of the six colleges and my own experience, should provide a useful point of departure for many colleges.

There are always problems associated with early attempts to frame a new idea, and the reader should be aware of the limitations in this book. The second wave of educational reform to place learning first is still in the early stages of development. There are many unanswered questions regarding how to initiate reform efforts on a campus, how and what changes to make, where resources will come from, how to overcome resistance, how to evaluate progress, and so forth. There is a great deal of interest in the learning college, and some experimentation is already underway, but the future of how this concept will develop and become embedded in community college culture is still quite unclear.

A second limitation is related to the six community colleges I have characterized as emerging models of the learning college. None of the leaders of these colleges claims they have designed the definitive model of a learning college. They are just beginning their journeys, reworking the present to create the future. The stories they tell here may already be obsolete, not only because of publication lag but also because these colleges are leapfrogging toward a vanishing horizon of change. The colleges are different in the way they approach their tasks and design their structures and their outcomes. There is, however, a common bond, a common commitment to placing learning first, for placing learning as the central value and guiding light for everything they do. In their own view, they fall far short of their goal. They are well aware of their limitations and of the difficulty of the long journey still ahead.

Except for a brief review of some of the most important pressures forcing change in education noted in the concluding section of chapter 2, a third limitation of the book is my decision not to include an entire chapter on the social forces and trends that are forcing changes in all institutions, especially in education. This information is so readily available in every article and book on change in education that I felt it would be a repetition of the obvious.

Finally, I caution leaders not to confuse reform efforts to place learning first with all of the other changes going on in higher education. Institutions of higher education can easily claim that they are already deeply involved in placing learning first in their institutions. Many colleges are involved in the process of transforming their cultures: marketing to new groups of students, developing assessment and outcome measures, building creative linkages to their communities, applying new technologies to improve teaching and management, increasing standards for students and teachers, flattening organizational structures, decentralizing decision making, building alliances with business and industry, applying Continuous Quality Improvement and Total Quality Management processes, etc., etc., etc. But in many cases these actions have been the usual extensions and add-ons, leading to only modest change in the status quo. In most cases, what students learn and how students learn have remained relatively unchanged. A great deal of change is going on in higher education, but not much of it is focused on the objective of the second wave of educational reform, which is to place learning front and center in the educational enterprise.

In spite of these limitations, the concept of the learning college is an attractive idea in embryo that, if nurtured properly, can address many of the current problems facing higher education. It even has the potential of changing the entire architecture of higher education. And the community college may be the ideal crucible in which the concept of the learning college can take form. After 100 years of experimentation, the community college has emerged as an institution with a strong penchant for innovation and for risk taking. The community college is not afraid to reach out and explore new ideas and new concepts.

The learning college is a new concept, but it is built on long-established values in the community college, values that place a premium on quality teaching for the purpose of helping students make passionate connections to learning. If the concept of the learning college cannot come to full fruition in the community college, the community college we know today may cease to exist, and the community college we dream of for the future may never come to be.

Terry O'Banion
Newport Beach, California

Davis, Stan and Botkin, Jim. The Monster under the Bed: How Business Is Mastering the Opportunity of Knowledge for Profit. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.

Leonard, George. "The End of School," The Atlantic, May 1992.

Moe, Roger. Cited in Armajani, Babak et al. A Model for the Reinvented Higher Education System: State Policy and College Learning. Denver, CO: Education Commission of the States, January 1994.

Perelman, Lewis J. School's Out: A Radical New Formula for the Revitalization of America's Educational System. New York: Avon Books, 1992.

Wingspread Group on Higher Education. An American Imperative: Higher Expectations for Higher Education. Racine, WI: The Johnson Foundation, Inc., 1993.