An Examination of a Reform Movement at City Colleges of Chicago through the Participation of College Advisors

City Colleges of Chicago undergo policy changes. In 2010, a reform sought to install accountability and transition City Colleges of Chicago into compliance with government funding requests through Reinvention. Reinvention, in the public view, was hailed as a necessity for a system that could not sustain on its own. It used a shock-system approach--one that had not been tested--to implement reform. Reinvention was created, justified, advocated, pushed, and delivered by a hand-picked team formed by Chancellor Hyman. Data became the front method of decision making along with ideas implemented at other institutions outside City Colleges of Chicago (Hyman, 2018). The reform had the support of Chicago mayoral candidates and City Colleges of Chicago Board of Trustees (Hyman, 2018). Publicly, Reinvention was not only necessary, but it also catapulted City Colleges of Chicago into a -- "world education" (Hyman, 2018). While another study was published by Jennifer M. Horace (2016), there was an inconclusive outcome as interviewees were faculty and external community members. External interviewees did not know enough to speak about Reinvention. Internally, advisors had a different experience. For this study, academic advisors who worked through Reinvention were interviewed using open-ended questions. Data were collected via interviews to seek if there had been changes because of Reinvention. Coding of data to identify common subjects, topics, themes, and trends was processed. Results of research showed that advisors were part of the delivery of Reinvention by closing programs. Such change created a ripple effect for services. Students became frustrated and decided to leave City Colleges of Chicago because of program closures. Implementation of Reinvention was not the same across the four campuses. Campus administrators did opt to not enact all facets of Reinvention, thus sheltering them from directives. Advisors, themselves, ultimately decided to give up on Reinvention and wait for it to be finished. Administrators saw many shifts in three out four campuses, which created a hostile work environment. Ultimately, Reinvention negatively impacted the population it served by attempting to localize programming at one campus, assigning concentrations that often did not match community needs, and reducing enrollment numbers. The same things that Reinvention sought to better became the perils of the reform. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]