Differences in community colleges’ missions: Evidence from California

Using data for 108 colleges in the California Community College System, this paper poses two questions. First, do California community colleges differ in their missions? Second, if they do, can inter-college differences in missions be explained? We address the first question by developing college-specific measures of curriculum mix, which we use to characterize colleges as to their curriculum emphases and specializations. We find that colleges differ in the extent to which they offer a transfer specialization or a nontransferable voc-ed specialization. Turning to the second question, we attempt to explain inter-college differences in curriculum emphasis and specialization with institutional variables including student demographics, labor market characteristics, and community characteristics. While not strong, we view our results as suggesting that curriculum emphases and specializations are related to student demographics and community needs.