| Summary: | One of the most visible contemporary issues in higher education is the question of academic change. In seeking a more comprehensive understanding of academic change, scholars and practioners alike have directed their attention to the causes and consequences of curricular change. The movement toward a more systematic study of academic change is most apparent in the study of four year colleges and universities but current scholarship about the decision to change academic programs and curriculum in the community college is, for the most part, speculative. Three research questions guided this study: (1) What are the sources that influence the decision to change academic programs and curriculum in the community college? (2) What are the processes that led to a decision to change academic programs and curriculum in the community college? (3) What general theory of curriculum in community colleges can be developed on the basis of the findings of the first two questions? An inductive research methodolgy was most appropriate for this study and the case study method was selected as the research procedure for a number of reasons but most importantly because it was suited to the generation of new theory for it is a methodology used to generate new theory. The focus of the study was an urban, multi-campus community college. The study examined two changes in academic policy initiated at the institution: the decision to adopt an open-entry open-exit instructional methodology for technical-occupational programs and the decision to adopt a set of uniform general education requirements for occupational and transfer programs. This case study research employed four major phases: (1) collection of the data; (2) analysis of the data; (3) presentation of the data; and (4) presentation of the findings. The research relied on three major sources of data: (1) interviews; (2) documents, and (3) field research. The analysis of the data involved the identification and categorization of relevant variables to determine emerging patterns in the data.
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