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The impact of community college attendance on baccalaureate attainment

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Community colleges are seen as contradictory institutions. Supporters contend that community colleges increase baccalaureate attainment by providing access to higher education for students who would otherwise not attend college, while critics argue that these institutions decrease baccalaureate attainment for students who would otherwise attend a 4-year institution. Using the National Education Longitudinal Study, this article advances the literature on the impact of community colleges on baccalaureate attainment by estimating new models that allow controlling for pathways of enrollment while using different measures of educational expectations and correcting for college choice. Findings suggest that community colleges significantly reduce the probability of attaining a bachelor’s degree, as compared to 4-year institutions, an effect that remains after having taken into account non-traditional enrollment pathways, educational expectations, and self-selection into 2-year and 4-year institutions.

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Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Thomas Bailey, Francisco Rivera-Batiz, Henry Levin, MoonHee Kim, Gregory Kienzl, Tatiana Melguizo, Sara Goldrick-Rab, Josipa Roksa, Liang Zhang, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. The author is also grateful to Timothy Leinbach for his outstanding data programming, and to the Community College Research Center and the Sloan Foundation for their financial support. All errors remaining rest solely with the author.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, Brown University, Providence, RI, USA

    Mariana Alfonso

  2. A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions, Brown University, 67 George Street, Box 1977, Providence, RI, 02912, USA

    Mariana Alfonso

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  1. Mariana Alfonso
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Correspondence to Mariana Alfonso.

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An earlier version of this paper was presented at the November 2004 Annual Meeting of the Association for the Study of Higher Education.

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Alfonso, M. The impact of community college attendance on baccalaureate attainment. Res High Educ 47, 873–903 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11162-006-9019-2

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