Thomas R. Bailey
Personal Information
Description
Thomas R. Bailey is the eleventh President of Teachers College, Columbia University. He has served on the College’s faculty for the past 30 years and is the George & Abby O’Neill Professor of Economics & Education. Dr. Bailey earned his undergraduate degree in economics from Harvard University and his Ph.D. in labor economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. An economist with specialties in education, labor economics, and econometrics, Dr. Bailey is widely regarded as one the nation’s leading authorities on community colleges. Since 1992 he also has been Director of the Institute on Education and the Economy at the College, and in 1996 he established the Community College Research Center at the College. His papers have appeared in a wide variety of education, policy-oriented and academic journals, and he has authored or co-authored several books on the employment and training of immigrants and the extent and effects of on-the-job training. Along with Shanna Smith Jaggars and Davis Jenkins, Dr. Bailey recently wrote Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success. Other books include Defending the Community College Equity Agenda, co-edited with Vanessa Morest, Working Knowledge: Work-Based Learning and Education Reform, co-authored with Katherine Hughes and David Moore; Manufacturing Advantage, written with Eileen Appelbaum, Peter Berg, and Arne Kalleberg; and The Double Helix of Education and the Economy, co-authored with Sue Berryman. Source: [Columbia University](
Books
Redesigning America's Community Colleges
In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year nearly half of the nation s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America s Community Colleges "is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of guided pathways clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America s Community Colleges" offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every students goals.