scholarly journals Do Community Colleges Provide a Viable Pathway to a Baccalaureate Degree?

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bridget Terry Long ◽  
Michal Kurlaender

Community colleges have become an important entryway for students intending to complete baccalaureate degrees. However, many question the viability of the transfer function and wonder whether students suffer a penalty for starting at 2-year institutions. The authors examined how the outcomes of community college entrants compared with those of similar students who initially entered 4-year institutions within the Ohio public higher education system. Using a detailed data set, the authors tracked outcomes for 9 years and used multiple strategies to deal with selection issues: propensity score matching and instrumental variables. The results suggest that straightforward estimates are significantly biased, but even after accounting for selection, students who initially began at community colleges were 14.5% less likely to complete bachelor’s degrees within 9 years.

1991 ◽  
Vol 61 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-337 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Dougherty

Community colleges offer many students an alternative route to achieving a baccalaureate degree. In this article, Kevin Dougherty analyzes data on these institutions to see how effective they are in helping students transfer to and succeed in four-year colleges. After controlling for differences in family background, high school record, and educational aspirations of students entering two- and four-year colleges, the author finds that community college entrants receive fewer bachelor's degrees. While finding a strong case for reform, Dougherty argues that present reformers need to keep in mind the comprehensive nature of the community college and be sure that their reform proposals will preserve rather than diminish the services it offers students. Dougherty then discusses two sweeping reforms: transforming community colleges into four-year colleges, and converting them into two-year branches of state universities.


2019 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-135
Author(s):  
Edna Martinez

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of faculty working within baccalaureate degree–granting community colleges. Method: Data sources included 16 semi-structured interviews, numerous publicly available organizational documents, and participant observations. Results: Analysis revealed three distinct, yet interconnected themes. In light of the institutionalization of baccalaureate degrees, faculty experienced shifting and intensifying work expectations related to service, research, and research-related activities. These shifts exacerbated existing tensions, which in turn led faculty to live with uncertainty in terms of tenure and promotion, the direction of the college, and whether or not they could thrive in a highly contradictory environment. Contributions: This study adds to the literature concerning the community college baccalaureate—a topic of heightened interest. It is essential that we gain a better understanding of the implications of this trend for faculty, which in turn carry implications for students.


Author(s):  
Carmen M. Dones

Community colleges have been expanding their mission to include the conferring of bachelor's degrees in career education programs for many years, which has been met with consternation over the quality of a bachelor's degree from a community college, as well as with resources in higher education being limited or redirected when there has been cutbacks in funding. Legislators in some states and critics in higher education refer to the phenomenon of community colleges offering baccalaureate degrees as mission creep, opposed to seeing the equity value in higher degree attainment. Thus, the purpose of the study is to analyze state policies through examination of secondary data to determine the purpose of the community college bachelor's degree programs nationwide, the types of programs being offered, as well as what the phenomenon reveals about being a viable pathway to a higher education degree for the typical community college student.


2014 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rasheda Khanam

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the impact of child health (measured by nutritional status) on schooling performance of Bangladeshi children. Design/methodology/approach – The data set used in this study comes from a survey titled “Micronutrient and Gender Study (MNGS) in Bangladesh”. The survey was administered by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). The author controls for the potential endogeneity of child health by an instrumental variables approach. The results indicate that the impact of child health on school achievement will be overestimated if endogeneity of child health is ignored. Findings – The results reveal that child health has significant effects on school enrolment and grade attainment, although it does not affect the current school attendance. The impact of child health is stronger for school enrolment compared to grade attainment. Originality/value – This study improves the understanding on the relationship between child health and schooling in several ways. First, the author controls for the potential endogeneity of child health by an instrumental variables approach. The chosen instrumental variables (i.e. heights of father and mother) are strong predictors of child health and satisfy the validity test. Second, this study examines the effects of child health on wide ranges of schooling measures: enrolment, attendance and attainment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 313-331
Author(s):  
Felipe Gonçalves Brasil ◽  
Ivan Henrique de Mattos e Silva ◽  
Aline Vanessa Zambello

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyle Barron ◽  
Edward Kung ◽  
Davide Proserpio

We assess the impact of Airbnb on residential house prices and rents: using a data set of Airbnb listings from the entire United States and an instrumental variables estimation strategy, we show that Airbnb has a positive impact on house prices and rents.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Y. Li

Performance funding policies for higher education allocate appropriations to public institutions based on student outcomes such as degree completions. This study investigates whether a special science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) incentive in 13 state performance funding policies leads to greater undergraduate degree completions in STEM fields. This study applies a conceptual framework of principal–agent theory and anticipatory policy effects. Incorporating a panel data set on 551 public 4-year institutions from 2003-2004 to 2014-2015, results from difference-in-differences analyses suggest that the STEM incentive increases total STEM bachelor’s degrees completed as well as STEM bachelor’s degrees completed as a proportion of all bachelor’s degrees. Findings are robust to alternative specifications, suggesting that institutions are responding to the performance funding STEM incentive by graduating more students in these high-demand fields.


2015 ◽  
Vol 33 (10) ◽  
pp. 1679-1699
Author(s):  
Christin L. Carotta ◽  
Amy E. Bonomi ◽  
Meghan A. Lee ◽  
Lynsey A. Terrell

We used an innovative data set involving audio-recorded conversations between abusers and victims to explore the interactional patterns that occur within violent relationships, following severe violence and the abuser’s detainment. Using micro-level conversational data, our analysis sequenced the hopes/desires that victims and abusers expressed around their expectations for continuing or discontinuing a connection with each other. Conversations commonly included an expressed statement to end the relationship. Although it was common for both victims and abusers to express hope of ending the relationship, victims were most likely to initiate this desire. In response, abusers used multiple strategies to regain connection, including 1) challenging the victim, 2) declaring love or a desire to continue the relationship, 3) appealing for sympathy or help from the victim, and 4) mirroring or accepting the victim’s desire to end the relationship (when other strategies were unsuccessful). Abusers’ responses served to cultivate additional conflict in the relationship while at the same time maintained communication and facilitated relationship recovery following threats of dissolution. These findings contribute to an increased theoretical understanding of the dynamics of domestic violence in the sensitive period involving the couple’s physical separation.


2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-56
Author(s):  
Michael Skolnik

During the last third of the twentieth century, college sectors in many countries took on the role of expanding opportunities for baccalaureate degree attainment in applied fields of study. In many European countries, colleges came to constitute a parallel higher education sector that offered degree programs of an applied nature in contrast to the more academically oriented programs of the traditional university sector. Other jurisdictions, including some Canadian ones, followed the American approach, in which colleges facilitate degree attainment for students in occupational programs through transfer arrangements with universities. This article offers some possible reasons why the Ontario Government has chosen not to fully embrace the European model, even though the original vision for Ontario’s colleges was closer to that model to than to the American one.  


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