defined “junior colleges” of prior decades, today’s community colleges are complex organizations
serving multiple functions that extend far beyond the traditional transfer function.
In this paper, I accomplish two tasks:
1.
I briefly address some of the problems with the limited amount of research that
does exist regarding the relationship between community college enrollment and
educational attainment, paying special attention to the inherent bias toward
traditional, four-year college student models.
2.
I analyze longitudinal data to test existing theories on two separate subsamples:
four-year college students and community college students. These analyses
demonstrate the extent to which existing theories of college departure, or “drop-
out,” might apply differently to community college student populations when
compared to four-year college students.
Data
NCES’s Beginning Postsecondary Student Longitudinal Study (BPS:90/94) is utilized for all
data reported in the tables. The quantitative data chosen are particularly well suited for this topic.
Unlike surveys that sample high school cohorts like HS&B, NELS:88, and NLS-72, the BPS survey
includes a nationally representative sample of students who began their post-secondary education in
1989/90 and follows them up through 1994.
How Different Are They? Age Comparisons
The sampling design of BPS better captures the increasing age heterogeneity of the actual
college-going population by including not only those students who go directly from high school to
college, but also those GED recipients and older students who return to college later in life. In fact,
over one third of all beginning college students delay their entry to college from high school. Such
age variation and diversity of intentions and life circumstances is clearly not included very well in
samples of high school cohorts. The problem is particularly acute in terms of capturing a
Convention