A Social-Justice Agenda for Community College

BY   Emily Deruy
PUB   The Atlantic [perfectpullquote align=”full” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=”16″]Eloy Oakley sees expanding access to traditionally underserved communities as an economic imperative for the state and nation.[/perfectpullquote]
Eloy Oakley isn’t shy about his plans to be much more “proactive” than previous chancellors when he takes over California’s mammoth community-college system in December.

“We’re going to take on a much more aggressive agenda with a clear lens on social justice and equity,” Oakley, who is in his final weeks as head of the Long Beach Community College District, told me during an interview at his office on the Long Beach City College campus.

Oakley, who is himself a product of the system and a first-generation college student who grew up in a family where higher education was not the expectation, is under no illusion that California’s community colleges alone can close the racial and socioeconomic educational attainment gaps that plague the state. But Oakley, who will be the first Latino to hold the position, wants California’s 113 community colleges to see eliminating the inequity and opportunity disparities that create those divides as part of their shared responsibility.

“I don’t think there is a greater equalizer than California community colleges in terms of the ability to take someone from a community where college hasn’t even been thought of and transform that individual and give them the opportunity to create a family that now thinks about college as an expectation,” he said. [mc4wp_form id=”6042″]