VI. Research Studies

The premises of institutions with distinctive customers and missions, and relationships to local economies, and the questions they raise leads to a series of studies, which are ordered by judgments of importance to the federal legislation. The first priority is to provide a descriptive picture of the enterprise that can serve as a common framework for classifying colleges, students, and systems in the subsequent research that will try to explain who receives what benefits from the system and how federal policy affects outcomes and impacts. Therefore, step number one is to classify and develop a taxonomy of community college students, institutions, and systems that may compare, for example, organizational and governance structures, missions, priorities, distribution and uses of federal funds, sources of revenues, alliances, distribution of enrollments by age, family status, race and ethnicity, program, organization of noncredit and customized education, concentrations of competitors, and ranges of business and industry services.

Next I will suggest, in line with the organizing theme of individuals, organizations, and regions, a study that focuses on each level. The last is particularly important for expanding the base of support and alliances among other agencies that are affected by community colleges and vocational education, such as the Appalachian Regional Commission, Economic Development Administration, and National Institute for Standards and Technology, and in the private sector.

1. Student Analyses

Describe the populations of current students and recent leavers and completers and analyze individual outcomes taking into account local labor markets' and individuals' goals. This would allow the Congress to appreciate the breadth of its investment and understand its real outcomes.

Survey a national sample of students, recent graduates, and recent school completers and leavers, stratified according to classifications devised earlier, which could be type of state system, college program, or location to record and analyze student characteristics, sources of financial support, number of remedial courses, basis for selecting their programs of study, goals and expectations, work experiences, special needs, and expected or (in the case of recent completers or leavers) attained outcomes. Most of this information will have to be obtained directly from individuals, and will not be available in school records. Thus, the study will require substantial assistance from the colleges to identify and locate individuals who have left programs. The study should help the Congress understand and appreciate the myriad paths students take and diversity of goals and ambitions.

2. Institutional Surveys

This research would explain differences in performance, enrollments, and missions among colleges in terms of goals, governance, external conditions, competition, and leadership. Since student outcomes are influenced by the quality and focus of a college's support services, educational programs, and labor market systems, an institutional study would help the Congress better understand how the federal funds influence quality and focus and just what sorts of targeting or direction would have the greatest impacts.

Obtain information, through interviews and/or surveys, from college CEOs and selected trustees in a stratified sample of colleges (e.g., structure of state system and size of institution) to identify and analyze the uses of federal funds, revenue streams and relative sources, missions and priorities, plans and goals, attitudes toward academic versus vocational programs and towards student work experience opportunities, alliances and relationships to other organizations and to industry, internal structure (i.e., administrative framework for "shadow colleges"), and support and means for institutional and faculty learning and innovation.

3. Regional Analysis

Analyze impacts of colleges within regional economic system by defining the relationships of colleges to the rest of system and the ways colleges affect the growth nomy of the economy and opportunities for various populations. The benefits of this would be (a) to broaden the connection of the legislation to national economic performance and technology development and (build support in other committees concerned with both) and (b) explain the collective and synergistic outcomes of postsecondary vocational education.

This research would be based on case studies that target economic regions as the units of analysis, stratified by type (industry profile), scale, and performance of economy, to describe how the community college fits into the overall regional economic system; identify areas of specialization and competition; assess ways in which the college responds to regional labor markets and employer demands and equalizes opportunities; examine special strengths; current problems; and estimate impacts on economy and community in terms of employment and business growth and retention and personal income. These studies should place the community college not just within the economic system but look at its programs, enrollments, strengths, and weaknesses in comparison to other public and private sector education and training companies. Part of the assessment process will require obtaining information other agencies and from employers, including small and mid-sized companies and noncustomers of colleges. These studies would be best conducted by regional economists or planners from outside of traditional education research fields, who view education and training as integral elements of economies and have experience in measuring economic impacts.

4. Additional Studies

Two other studies would be very useful for both appreciating the value and potential of community colleges and for identifying new and innovative directions for policy.

Conduct international comparative studies to learn how other industrialized nations address issues such as social exclusion, industry demands, skill shortages, and changing youth preferences; effectively use social partnerships, develop skill standards, and implement work experiences; mix theory and practice; and fit into the larger educational establishment. This research is important because the experiences and policies of other programs already shape the thinking of policymakers.³² For example, national skills standards, school-to-career programs, and notions about workplace based learning are heavily influenced by European practices. Other nations are also facing some of the same challenges as U.S. colleges, such as meeting the employment needs of a rapidly growing information technology fields, changing values of young people, increasing immigration, and academic creep within institutions. But policy transference is limited by the perfunctory examinations and often superficial knowledge gained from brief trips or conferences. Further, very little has focused on the postsecondary level. A more systematic and critical assessment would help policy-makers better understand non-U.S. policies and determine which and how lessons from other places can be best used to improve practices and policies in the context of America's political, economic, and social environments. This research would analyze and compare the effectiveness of European systems, selected to represent a range of models, with respect to the various missions of U.S. community colleges to determine whether which impacts are the results of transferable innovations and which are a function of local culture and social structure. This research would require a broad understanding of non-U.S. systems and access to Ministries and selected colleges.

Compile benchmark practices with respect to various congressional and national priorities, looking particularly for innovative practices that improve outcomes for students, local businesses, and local economies, such as innovative melding of academic and vocational courses, especially productive linkages with industry, or successful remediation programs. Most of the candidates can be found through literature searches. Although understanding catalysts and impacts will require further investigation.

VII. Potential Research Difficulties

1. The diversity among state community college systems, and within the systems among institutions, missions, programs, students, and priorities will make it difficult to generalize find-ings without first developing various taxonomies. The ways that the research classifies and strati-fies among these variables will be crucial.

2. It would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to use "preferred" research designs, where experimental and control groups can be randomly assigned and conditions controlled. Even if such a design could be used, local economies and communities are not environmentally controlled laboratories, and it such a study would very likely not be worth the investment. Therefore, it may not be possible to actually measure independent effects of policies.

3. The low demand among employers for "associate's degrees" undermines the value of program completion, the most common measure of success (and funding) of programs. Therefore, a variety of additional and new outcome measures will be needed, and thus it will be difficult to compare outcomes of current policies to past policies.

4. The low investment in education and training among most U.S. companies may prove a barrier to collecting information from employers, particularly the small-and mid-sized firms. Most employer surveys rely on large companies and low response rates, which biases results towards firms large enough to have human resource development departments. Educational researchers may have to rely on regional agencies and associations that have built relationships with employers, such as the Manufacturing Extension Partnership, National Association of Manufacturers, and Small Business Development Centers.

5. Since so many community college students are part time, adult, and mobile, it will be difficult to locate recent completers or leavers. The movement in and out and within the system makes tracking much more difficult than in the secondary systems, where record transfer is a requirement. The part-time nature of the student body and the mixing and matching of courses to meet employment requirements will make it difficult to identify consistent courses of study and to track students following completion.

6. The structure and performance of regional economies can have a profound impact on enrollments, revenues, and outcomes. An economy dominated by traditional industries will offer different economic opportunities than one based on high-growth or high-tech industries. Any measure of individual or institutional outcomes, particularly over time, would have to reflect the condition of the local economy.

7. Trying to isolate and measure the impacts of an individual institution and/or college-based intervention on a regional economy, given all of the other external factors that can affect economic outcomes, will prove difficult. Most economic impact studies use fairly gross estimates and try to capture indirect secondary and tertiary effects.

This page last modified August 11, 1999 (glc).