Degrees of Success: How to Restructure Community Colleges

Fall 2006, Volume 28, Number 1

James Rosenbaum

Poor students are more likely to complete degrees when they attend occupational colleges rather than community colleges, according to research by IPR Faculty Fellow James Rosenbaum, professor of human development and social policy.

With Regina Deil-Amen, an assistant professor at Penn State and a former IPR graduate student, Rosenbaum investigated 14 two-year colleges in the Chicago area, half of which were public community colleges and the other half private occupational colleges.

One key difference, they discovered, is that community colleges expect students to possess a certain amount of social know-how, or “cultural capital.” This know-how is what helps students to successfully navigate the educational system and to obtain a degree. But poor students, who make up a large portion of those enrolled in community colleges, are usually the first in their families to attend college and thus are less likely to have received this implicit education. They are also more likely to face challenging child care and transportation issues than four-year college students.

Overall, community colleges were more likely to treat their students like those in four-year colleges, encouraging them to take a variety of courses and to cut down on outside activities that might hamper their schoolwork. Occupational colleges, however, provide universal mandatory counseling and student information systems that help students to avoid mistakes—or at least detect them early. They also offer only a few focused programs, instead of an academic smorgasbord.

Even when community colleges attempt to provide more flexibility with a vast array of class options and hours, Rosenbaum and Deil-Amen found they sometimes curtail students’ ability to accommodate extracurricular responsibilities such as work and child care. Also, “students reported a lot of problems with needing a particular course at a particular semester, and it wasn’t available,” Rosenbaum said. “Those kinds of problems tend to arise because the college is doing too much.”

Rosenbaum noted that having faced “fairly regular” budget cuts since the 1990s, community colleges had to cut out programs that were helpful to students. But it is a mistake to believe offering a wide range of isolated courses is more important, he continued. He recommends structural changes to match more closely the model at occupational colleges.

For community colleges, “creating highly structured programs which allow dependable progress should be a priority,” Rosenbaum said. In such a system, students would be more likely to complete a degree within their expected timeframe. He is currently working on a book, After Admission: From College Access to College Success, with Deil-Amen and IPR graduate research assistant Ann Person, to be published by the Russell Sage Foundation.