The Case for the Community College

The American public community colleges were established to accommodate the twentieth-century drive for more years of education. Located in every state, they enroll 5 million students, two-thirds of whom attend part time. Their occupational programs lead toward both immediate employment, as in clerical work, and higher-status careers, such as those in the health and engineering technologies that may require additional schooling. Their transfer function is indistinct because the data and definitions are not stable and because their students have variant goals. The colleges could be strengthened if the states developed fiscal incentives to be awarded to institutions that increased their proportion of students who gained associate degrees, entered employment in the field for which they were prepared, and/or matriculated at a four-year college or university.