Dr. Debra D. Bragg - What Research on the Community College Baccalaureate Teaches Us About Systemic Inequities in Higher Education
This seminar presentation begins with a brief description of baccalaureate degree conferral by community colleges in the United States, recognizing the complex factors that advance and impede the growth of community college baccalaureate (CCB) degrees. Following this overview, Dr. Bragg will explain how long-standing structures and policies perpetuating inequities in higher education systems are used to block reforms such as CCB-degree programs that are intentionally designed to meet the educational and employment needs of racially minoritized students. The seminar will conclude with a discussion of radical policy reforms needed to ensure higher education systems in the United States (and possibly elsewhere in the world) evolve in ways that are far more racially and socially just than the past.
About the speaker
Dr. Debra D. Bragg
Debra D. Bragg is founding director of the Office of Community College Research and Leadership (OCCRL) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she is also endowed professor emerita. In 2016, she joined the University of Washington in Seattle where she founded the Community College Research Initiatives group. Dr. Bragg is also a Fellow with New America, a policy think tank in Washington DC. Over her career, Dr. Bragg has led national studies on college and career pathways, transfer pathways, community college baccalaureate degrees, STEM education, and many other critical issues facing education in the US. In 2015, Dr. Bragg was named a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association and in 2016 she received the Distinguished Career Award from the Association for the Study of Higher Education.