Counting the Hidden Assets
In this age of accountability, community colleges need to demonstrate that they are meeting or exceeding performance goals using measures that allow accurate, apples-to-apples evaluation of programs based on nationally recognized standards. Currently, however, there is no standard national measurement of the direct educational and economic benefits of noncredit courses to their communities, so they are not systematically evaluated. The lack of relevant and appropriate measures leaves vast holes in policymakers’ understanding of the scope, impact and effectiveness of the work of community colleges.
Simply stated, the underlying issue is that existing data collection systems are not designed to capture the most basic information about noncredit activities delivered by community colleges. As an urgently needed first step, this paper makes the case for the training hour as the basic unit of measurement and proposes a taxonomy to classify and describe the range of noncredit activities delivered by community colleges.
The Business Roundtable, The Community College Research Center, Macomb Community College, LaGuardia Community College
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