Community colleges and the politics of sociospatial scale

In an analysis of 421 community college mission statements, I demonstrate how community colleges recontextualize a dominant discourse in which economic activity at the global scale transcends regulation, the nation-state lacks the moral authority to influence markets, and local communities have no choice but to adapt. Findings suggest that the community college has appropriated economic development as a mission priority and tacitly accommodated scalar relations typical of post-Fordism. On the other hand, a rival hypothesis suggests a competing trend in which colleges prepare and empower students to engage in sociopolitical processes at a global scale.