A survey of California community colleges was conducted in 1980-81 to determine the extent to which compensatory and developmental courses currently fulfill requirements for the associate degree (AA) and to determine how many of the compensatory courses were actually used by students to satisfy AA requirements. Responses to the survey were received from 100 of the state's 106 colleges, and a random selection of every fortieth student transcript (N=1,476) for 1980-81 graduates was provided by the colleges. The number of compensatory courses reported ranged from 1 to 48, indicating a wide divergence in the understanding of the definition of compensatory courses; and a decision was made to exclude reports from colleges with fewer than 10 compensatory courses to improve the quality of the analysis. Study findings, based on the revised sample of 56 colleges offering a total of 1,004 compensatory courses and on the transcripts of 855 students, included the following: (1) almost all of the compensatory courses reported satisfied requirements for the AA; (2) the average number of compensatory courses offered was 17.9; (3) the average number of compensatory units used by students to satisfy degree requirements was 2.03; and (4) the number of compensatory units used to satisfy degree requirements did not appear to be strongly related to the number of compensatory courses offered by a college. The survey instrument is appended. (HB)