Curricular Trends in Community Colleges: Implications for Transfer.

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In spring 1991, the Center for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC) in Los Angeles, CaliEornia, conducted the seventh in a series of studies of trends in liberal arts course offerings in community cclleges nationwide. During spring 1992, CSCC developed a taxonomy for non-liberal arts courses, and completed a course section tally using the same 164 community colleges participating in the 1991 study. Study findings were combined with results from CSCC’s ongoing Transfer Assembly Project to examine a number of research questions including: areas of change in the community college curriculum; the relationship between curricular emphases and transfer rate; the percentage of non-liberal arts courses which are transferable to four-year institutions; and the relationship between institutional characteristics (e.g., size and location) and curricular offerings. Major findings of the study included the following: (1) a total of 104,565 course sections were tallied, of which 45,360 (43.4%) were non-liberal arts courses; (2) while course offerings in agriculture and engineering have shown considerable decreases between 1978 and 1991, English-as-a-Second-Language course sections have increased dramatically during this same period, comprising over half of all foreign language earollments in 1991; and (3) in California, close to two-thirds of non-liberal arts courses are transferable to comprehensive state universities. A detailed breakdown of course offerings by discipline area, a description of the taxonomy used for the 6 liberal arts discipline areas and the 10 non-liberal arts discipline areas, data tables, and references are included. (PAA) Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document.

Curricular Trends in Community Colleges: Implications for Transfer Jan !gnash Center for the Study of Community Colleges 1749 Mandeville Lane Los Angeles, CA 90049 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY J. Ignash TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER ERIC U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educations! Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERIC’ (tis document has been reproduced as eived from the person or organization originating it C.: Minor changes have been made to improve reproduction Quality Points of new or opinions stated intrust:If:Cu. merit dO not necessarily represent offiCial OE RI position or policy Paper presented at Th0 Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges 1993 Annual Research Conference, Granlibakkan Conference Center, Tahoe City, California, March 3-5, 1993