Why aren’t community colleges differentiated with respect to curricular emphasis in the undergraduate instructional program classification?
The instructional program classifications are derived from national data on degree conferrals by field of study. Program concentrations are inferred from the degree field information. This inference is reasonable at the 4-year level, but much less so at the 2-year level because the majority of community college students—including those who may have achieved their educational objectives—do not receive any formal award. (Some 6.2 million students were enrolled for credit at public 2-year institutions in fall 2003; those institutions awarded about 478,000 associate’s degrees and 313,000 certificates in 2003-04.) As a result, classifying community colleges on the basis of the minority of students who receive a credential would not be representative of the colleges’ offerings. One of the biggest gaps in the national data on colleges and universities is the absence of comprehensive, institution-level data on curricular emphases at community colleges.
Related Questions
- Why aren’t community colleges differentiated with respect to curricular emphasis in the undergraduate instructional program classification?
- How can an institution have an exclusively undergraduate enrollment profile, and yet have a graduate instructional program classification?
- Can my son/daughter receive credit towards an undergraduate degree program at other colleges and universities?
