Community College Development in India

The educational system in India is ready for a revamp and community colleges have been identified by policy makers as a vehicle for that change. Although they have existed since the 1990’s, the urgent focus of the Indian government in providing skills to its burgeoning youth population has resulted in a number of community colleges being granted permission to begin functioning as part of existing universities, colleges and polytechnics. The government has special interest in U.S. community college models for its features like open access and industrial partnerships. However, it is not clear whether implementers faced with running the new community colleges have a clear understanding of the borrowed model or whether they are adequately supported. The literature review indicated that global movements of policy borrowing can be manifested in the adoption of foreign educational models. The literature on policy borrowing offered some popular models with which to interpret these national processes (Phillips & Ochs, 2004; Steiner-Khamsi, 2014). However, they do not seem to account for decision making processes at the strategic actors’ or stakeholder’s level. For now, what is apparent is the stance of the implementer after the decision has been made. Problems with this conception would be that decision - making appears to be rigid, linear, one- time processes. It also ignores the aspect of learning that implementers may find inherent in policy adaptation to suit the contexts. It appears that the current theoretical frameworks overlook the black box of decision making which influence an implementer to manifest resistance, non-decision or support. They suggest that internalization or indigenization are distinct processes removed from implementation (Phillips and Ochs, 2004; Steiner- Khamsi, 2014). Also, implementers of the policy may experience recontextualizing simultaneously with decisions on the suitability of a feature in the borrowed model. The literature also seems to overlook nuances in decision making that may result in changing stances. Experts have suggested that globalization trends can help understand how context affects development of the global educational policies (Robertson, 2012; Verger et al 2012). This study adds to the literature on community college development in India with a specific focus on how individual implementers approached translating a foreign educational model, and broadly adds to the literature on policy borrowing in education. The variations in the thought processes of implementers from India looking at community college models in the U.S. were studied using phenomenographical methods. The study involved 13 participants from all over India yielded five categories of description namely; ‘Conceptualizing community colleges’, ‘Assimilation of the new ideas afforded by the learning opportunity in the U.S’, ‘Discerning similarity or difference in the home country and target country’, ‘Identifying obstacles or constraints in implementation’ and ‘Finding solutions for implementation of selected ideas’. These findings indicate that 1. Community colleges are still a very fluid notion 2. New ideas are selectively filtered 3. Context plays a great role in determining what is perceived as constraints of implementation and 4. perhaps the most important finding, that stances assumed by participants can change when faced with new insights or through collaboration with peers. Decision (or non-decision) does not appear to be constant. This finding is significant because it would prevent non - decision or rejection of policy that is not properly understood. The study also revealed immense differences in context where the community college scheme is being implemented in India. As such this study provides insights for policy makers to avoid making one size fits all guidelines for implementation.