Do Community Colleges Provide a Viable Pathway to a Baccalaureate Degree?
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- 1 March 2009
- journal article
- Published by American Educational Research Association (AERA) in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis
- Vol. 31 (1), 30-53
- https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373708327756
Abstract
Community colleges have become an important entryway for students intending to complete baccalaureate degrees. However, many question the viability of the transfer function and wonder whether students suffer a penalty for starting at 2-year institutions. The authors examined how the outcomes of community college entrants compared with those of similar students who initially entered 4-year institutions within the Ohio public higher education system. Using a detailed data set, the authors tracked outcomes for 9 years and used multiple strategies to deal with selection issues: propensity score matching and instrumental variables. The results suggest that straightforward estimates are significantly biased, but even after accounting for selection, students who initially began at community colleges were 14.5% less likely to complete bachelor’s degrees within 9 years.Keywords
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