Stemming from the Ford Foundation's Urban Community Colleges Transfer Opportunities Program (UCCTOP), this report presents the results of efforts of the Center for the Study of Community Colleges to gather and analyze data on the 24 two-year colleges that received UCCTOP grants to advance transfer opportunities in urban, public community colleges.…

Five major issues are currently confronting community colleges. The first issue relates to the need for a new measure of institutional functioning based on curriculum content (which is poorly represented by traditional program labels such as transfer or occupational programs) and student intent (which is rarely reflected by either program labels…

This report presents background on community college development and discusses four areas of concern. The first area is maintaining access for all students. Trends are toward tightening criteria for attendance. Colleges in some states will be forced to make clearer distinctions among the student groups they serve and for whom they expect to…

Offers several explanations for the development of community colleges, describes their clientele and mission, and discusses current shortcomings. Recommends changes to encourage program completion or transfer into four-year programs while maintaining open access. (DM)

Critics of the community college are justified in challenging unsubstantiated statements about the institution by college spokespersons or in public relations releases disguised as institutional analyses. During the 1960's, for example, increasing enrollments were often cited as evidence of public support for community colleges--without reference…

Within the last few years, American schools have moved toward routinely measuring the outcomes of their educational programs. Two national associations dealing with community colleges have also developed quantitative indicators to assess outcomes for two-year colleges. There are still colleges that make only minimal efforts at assessment, citing…

This paper discusses several aspects of the community college role in providing access to further studies: ways of calculating transfer rates and estimates of the number of students making the transition, incentives for and inhibitors of student transfer as reflected in state policy and institutional practice, and a look to the future of community…

The designer of a modern community college must concomitantly meet the needs of those who expect a college to fit their traditional perceptions of a suitable physical plan, and not repel the great numbers of nontraditional students the community college is expected to serve. Many community colleges have been built as an uneasy compromise between…

Community colleges account for over half of the ethnic minority enrollments in America, and a controversy has developed over how well these students are being served. On one hand, community colleges are praised for providing open access to higher education. Critics, however, claim that community colleges track minority students into low level…

The community colleges fail to respond adequately to critics who say that they perpetuate social inequity and to proposals that they expand their role in community education. Critics who charge that the colleges serve to maintain the class structure in America fail to recognize that progress toward equality of educational opportunity cannot lessen…

The September 1998 topical bibliographies and analyses in this collection cover the latest ERIC literature on community colleges in eleven key areas: (1) access, diversity, and inclusion; (2) civil society; (3) teaching and learning; (4) faculty; (5) technology; (6) governance; (7) leadership; (8) finance; (9) market forces; (10) change; and (11)…

This article focuses on the transfer of students from California community colleges to four-year colleges and universities. Following a brief introduction to laws and procedures specified upon the inception of community colleges in California in 1910, and a recognition of the difficulty in student transfer throughout the history of higher…

The Urban Community Colleges Transfer Opportunities Program (UCCTOP) was initiated in 1983 to stimulate the transfer of minority students from community colleges to universities. Collecting data on the effects of the UCCTOP activities proved to be one of the most difficult aspects of the project as community colleges typically do not have reliable…

This document contains a report of the University of California, Irvine, and Golden West College Cooperative Science Improvement Project (UCI/GWC Project) which was designed to address two major problems: (1) the difficulty faced by community college biology teachers in keeping pace with developments in their field and (2) the problem of conveying…

Issues surrounding the transfer function of California's community colleges are analyzed in this report. First, a historical overview is provided of the role of community colleges, their relationship to the California State University and the University of California systems, and expectations concerning transfer. Next, problems associated with…