8-17-07 U.S. Department of Education Releases New Information on Two-Year Colleges

Volume 20 For Publication Date: August 17, 2007 No. 18

U.S. Department of Education Releases New
Information on Two-Year Colleges

A new report by the U.S. Department of Education finds that different types of two-year colleges, including public, not-for-profit, and for-profit sectors, are widely different among two-year schools in terms of institutional and student characteristics, resources, costs and financial aid, completions, and persistence. Specifically, the report concludes that marked differences exist between faculty, student, and institutional characteristics depending on the type of institution.

The report, Differential Characteristics of 2-Year Postsecondary Institutions: Postsecondary Education Descriptive Analysis Report, was released by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), a division of the U.S. Department of Education. NCES is the primary federal entity for collecting, analyzing, and reporting data related to education in the United States and other nations.

The report used a community college classification system to examine the ways in which two-year institutions differ. For example, for degree and certificate completions by gender and race/ethnicity, the proportion of men and women receiving community college certificates varied by institutional type. “Men receive the majority of the two-year certificates at small and medium-sized public institutions, as well as at degree-granting for profit institutions (59%, 60%, and 63%, respectively).” Women received the majority of the two-year certificates at large public institutions, at 56%. With regard to race, 13% of associate’s degrees are awarded to Latino students at large public institutions, compared to 3% at small public institutions. According to the report, “at allied health not-for-profit institutions, 28% of associate’s degrees were awarded to Black students.”

What the report identified that is not new to most individuals working within public community colleges is that public two-year institutions that are less expensive than private institutions enroll the greatest number of students from low-income families.

A copy of this report can be found at the NCES home page: http://nces.ed.gov or http://www.edpubs.org.

—Jamillah Moore, Ed.D.