Affect Theory and the Community College Completion Agenda

Abstract

In this article we offer a critique of the 2012 landmark policy report, Reclaiming the American Dream, published by the American Association of Community Colleges. Reclaiming the American Dream is a critical policy document that advances the Completion Agenda, a policy, national in scope, that advocates for the organizational and cultural changes needed to improve completion rates. Because American community colleges have notoriously low completion rates, the Completion Agenda is a critically important policy currently impacting these institutions. The critique presented is grounded in the mobilities of policy literature and incorporates recent research and scholarship regarding affect theory. States, institutions and companies appeal to affect in advancing policies and priorities. However, scholars have only recently begun to explain how affect works as a factor in mobilizing policy. Our critique shows how an understanding of affect, as integral to the mobility of policy, illuminates and explains the manner in which the Completion Agenda is being transmitted to community colleges and also how community college presidents are pressured to support the implementation of this policy at their institutions.

Keywords

• community college
• completion agenda
• affect theory
• mobilities of policy
• neoliberalism