WHO IS THE CIVIC CONSULTING ALLIANCE?

Colleagues,
 
Please consider the following as we seek to answer the question: Who is the Civic Consulting Alliance?
 
(Excerpt from City Colleges of Chicago Reinvention: The Truth Blog Site)
 
The upper echelons of the bureaucracy that runs the City Colleges of Chicago (CCC) are in the midst of a drastic transformation of the historical mission of the CCC. This mission, like that of most community colleges across the U.S., has been to provide a path for millions of working class, poor or immigrant students to access a university education which offers personal intellectual enrichment that has long been recognized as one of the important foundations of democracy as well as professional advancement. Behind the facade of Reinvention the CCC hierarchy is moving away from these goals and instead narrowing the mission of the CCC to that of job training centers. In service to the Obama administration’s initiative to track students into associate degrees and certificates as their terminal degrees, they have invented the Reinvention. Corporate Chicago is steering this process under the guise of pro bono consultants and advisory councils. The result is the full adoption of the business model for the administrative structure of the CCC.  This has also allowed for the merging of political and business cronyism bloating the CCC headquarters with business positions, heaping on more than $5 million in additional annual salaries in the first nine months alone. 


This has all occurred since Cheryl Hyman, a businesswoman lacking prior educational leadership experience, was anointed chancellor. The impact on students, faculty and staff have begun with the loss of jobs, the reduction or elimination of services and the smothering of academic freedom.  The specifics of the Reinvention indicate that these attacks are just the beginning. Students and faculty have begun to air frustration, resentment, and opposition to the abuses of the Reinvention. An organized opposition to the masters of Reinvention is required in order to secure quality education, decent working conditions, and bright futures for all of those who work and study at the CCC.