This report contains two essays on the extent and import of current research for junior college personnel. Both authors write from the vantage point of the ERIC Clearinghouse for Junior Colleges at the University of California, Los Angeles. After surveying the literature inputs at the Clearinghouse, Cohen concludes that there is a serious lack of…

Although there are many reports on the introduction of replicable media in junior college instruction, there is a lack of coordinated research on any particular form of instruction. This is a serious matter, for, without date on whether or not anyone has learned anything from one medium, the introduction of any other medium is necessarily based on…

Institutional research (IR) in community/junior colleges in past years has been limited to gathering data for external agencies, concentrating on raw demographic data and student flow studies. IR should be directed toward providing data for administrative decisions and for successful maintenance of college operations. In spite of the heavy demands…

Since the inaugural meeting of the Southeastern Association of Community College Research in 1975, the research conducted at community colleges, as well as the issues facing researchers, have remained fairly constant. Research has been consistently understaffed and the themes of research have tended to focus on relating student progress to…

Institutional research in the community college suffers from lack of fiscal support and trained personnel. The project described here was conceived to enhance the capabilities of 12 people assigned research responsibilities in California community colleges who lacked sufficient training in research design and methodology. The overall plan was to…

Drawing from reports on the future of community colleges, summarizes trends in enrollments, curriculum, student achievement, institutional research, and accountability for educational outcomes. (DMM)

Noting that junior college institutional research is being affected by two major influences--changing student populations and information demands of state and federal agencies--the author suggests specific questions for research important to college operations and emphasizes the need to reconcile the frequently contradictory internal and external…

Community colleges generally conduct little research. Further, there is no generally accepted national research agenda for community colleges, no consistently funded national agency charged with studying the institutions as unique entities, and few educational researchers directing their attention toward them. The research that is undertaken on…

Within the last few years, American schools have moved toward routinely measuring the outcomes of their educational programs. Two national associations dealing with community colleges have also developed quantitative indicators to assess outcomes for two-year colleges. There are still colleges that make only minimal efforts at assessment, citing…

The community college mission includes such diverse goals as preparing students for job entry, teaching literacy, and satisfying students' personal interests. Measuring the colleges' transfer rates by no means tacitly elevates the transfer function above these other functions; it merely helps institutions estimate the effects of interventions on…

Accurate data on the number of students who transfer from two-year colleges to senior colleges are not available because the ways of counting transfers vary greatly from system to system and state to state. While most studies define transfer students as those who have taken courses at a community college and subsequently enroll at a senior…

In 1989, the Center for the Study of Community Colleges received a grant from the Ford Foundation to assist community colleges in defining their transfer rates and collecting data to support those definitions. The Center invited 240 community colleges with at least a 20% minority enrollment to participate in a Transfer Assembly. Interested…