Does community college versus four-year college attendance influence students' educational plans?

In this study researchers tested the hypothesis that community college attendance lowers students' precollege plans to obtain a bachelor of arts degree. In the presence of controls for precollege plans, other background factors, and college academic and nonacademic experiences, community college students initially planning to obtain a bachelor of arts degree were between 20% and 31% more likely than similar four-year college students to lower their plans below a bachelor of arts degree by the end of the second year of college.

A major critique of the two-year community college posits that, although it may largely guarantee equality of opportunity for access to postsecondary education, it has not, in relationship to four-year colleges and universities, provided equal opportunity in terms of the outcomes of postsecondary education (Brint & Karabel, 1989; Grubb, 1984; Karabel, 1986). A recent body of research, however, has called into question the notion that two-year college students are at a distinct disadvantage in terms of the cognitive or labor market outcomes of postsecondary education. For example, when initial ability and other important confounding influences were controlled statistically, students in two-year colleges appeared to make about the same gains in standardized measures of reading comprehension, mathematics, critical thinking, writing skills, and science reasoning as their student counterparts in four-year institutions (Bohr et al.,1994; Pascarella et al.,1995,19951996; Terenzini et al., 1994). Similarly, the weight of evidence suggests that, when individuals of equal educational attainment and background characteristics are compared, there is a general parity between those initially enrolling in two-year and four-year colleges in such areas as job prestige, earnings, job stability, unemployment rate, or job satisfaction (Anderson, 1984; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Smart & Ethington, 1985; Whitaker & Pascarella, 1994).

There seems to be little debate, however, that in the particularly crucial area of educational attainment students initially enrolling in two-year colleges are in fact significantly disadvantaged relative to similar students starting at four-year institutions (Kinnick & Kempner, 1988). Here the weight of evidence has indicated that twoyear college students seeking a bachelor of arts degree are about IS% less likely to complete that degree in the same amount of time as similar students who begin postsecondary education at a four-year college or university (e.g., Alba & Lavin, 1981; Dougherty, 1987, 1992, 1994; Lavin & Crook, 1990; Nunley & Breneman, 1988; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Velez, 1985). Because educational attainment plays such a central role in the labor-market returns of postsecondary education (e.g., Knox, Lindsay, & Kolb, 1993; Pascarella & Terenzini, 1991; Whitaker & Pascarella, 1994), such a finding would appear to have deleterious consequences for the occupational and economic mobility of students in two-year colleges.

Scholars have suggested a number of explanations for why beginning postsecondary education at a two-year college tends to inhibit degree attainment. One explanation tends to be largely structural and focuses on the difficulties involved in transferring from a two-year to a four-year institution to complete one's degree. Problems in securing acceptance, obtaining financial aid, and transferring credits can pose nontrivial administrative obstacles in transferring from two-year to four-year institutions (Dougherty, 1992, 1994; Grubb, 1991; Nora, 1993; Nora & Rendon, 1990). A related problem involves adjusting to the academic demands and unfamiliar social milieu of a four-year institution subsequent to transfer. Problems in such adjustment perhaps partially explain why a significant number of two-year college students experience a drop in grades after transferring (Dougherty, 1992, 1994; Kintzer & Wattenbarger, 1985).

A second explanation, and one which precipitated the research reported in this paper, concerns the role that two-year colleges themselves play in lowering students' educational attainment. In a major sociological critique of two-year colleges, Clark (1960, 1980) hypothesized that public two-year college systems are essentially a form of tracking in which the disproportionate numbers of non-White, working-class, and lower-middle-class students who attend two-year institutions are cooled out and led away from the path to a bachelor of arts degree. Specifically, the cooling-out process is one in which the curriculum, the socializing agents of the college (i.e., faculty and peers), and administrative procedures combine to lower students' educational aspirations and goals (Brint & Karabel, 1989; Hunt, Klieforth, & Atnell, 1977; Karabel, 1972, 1974). Thus, the socialpsychological reality of two-year college attendance itself functions to manage the ambition of lower socioeconomic status students in the American postsecondary education system (Brint & Karabel, 1989). As a result, instead of fostering social mobility for these students, twoyear college attendance tends to contribute to the reproduction of existing class differences (e.g., Grubb, 1984; Karabel, 1974, 1986).