Attending Community College Has Mixed Economic Outcomes

Who attends community colleges, what educational pathways do they follow, and what economic ends do they achieve? These are among the questions asked by Natalia Kolesnikova in “Community Colleges: A Route of Upward Economic Mobility,” a report published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis in March 2009.

Kolesnikova found that 59 percent of community college students are women (compared with 55 percent of four-year college students), and 60 percent are white (compared with 70 percent of four-year students). Community college students are more likely than students at four-year colleges to be older (with an average age of 28 versus 24), to be first-generation college students (more than 40 percent versus 27 percent), to attend school part-time (69 percent versus 37 percent), and to work while attending school (79 percent versus 70 percent).

Previous studies have indicated that students who complete an associate’s degree earn 16 to 27 percent more than their peers who do not pursue education after high school. Kolesnikova’s analysis suggests that women of all races (with 29 to 30 percent gains), as well as black and Hispanic men (with 25 to 27 percent gains), see greater economic benefits from an associate’s degree than do their white male counterparts (with 18 percent gains). But students who attend community college are less likely to earn higher degrees than those who begin at four-year colleges, and they earn less after having completed advanced degrees.

Kolesnikova details these and others statistics with a special emphasis on the Federal Reserve’s Eighth District, where the Bank of St. Louis is located. The full report is available for download at www.stlouisfed.org/community_development/assets/pdf/CommunityColleges.pdf.   

Report Suggests Ways to Strengthen Educational Opportunities for Older Adults

In November 2008, the American Council on Education (ACE) released “Mapping New Directions: Higher Education for Older Adults,” the second and final report in its “Reinvesting in the Third Age: Older Adults and Higher Education” project. Based on conversations with focus groups and roundtables as well as a national survey, the report gives insight into older adults’ educational choices and suggests ways to open the doors to higher education.

The report suggests that older adults attend college for a wide range of reasons: to expand their knowledge, to connect with their communities, and to gain skills and competencies for work. While institutions provide a range of support services to older adults (including computer training and career transition courses), 42 percent of institutions that responded to ACE’s survey indicated that less than 10 percent of their older students take advantage of these offerings. Focus groups suggested that older adults may find higher education generally inaccessible, both physically and in terms of climate. The reports suggests ways that higher education can rethink its program formats and outreach efforts to appeal to older adults, including using language directed to “lifelong learners” and those in the “third age” rather than “seniors.”

Fifty percent of adults age 50 and older enrolled in college are pursuing their studies in the community college setting, compared with only 33 percent of adults under age 25. The report’s findings are thus particularly pertinent to community colleges. To download the full report, visit www.acenet.edu/Content/NavigationMenu/ProgramsServices/CLLL/Reinvesting/MapDirections.pdf.

New Report Explores Barriers to Latina Student Success

In August 2009, the National Women’s Law Center and the Mexican American Legal Defense and Education Fund published “Listening to Latinas: Barriers to High School Graduation.” Noting key achievement gaps for Latina girls—only 59 percent of whom graduate from high school on time and with a standard diploma—the report highlights key recommendations for improving Latinas’ educational success.

Through surveys and interviews with students and staff, the report’s authors identified a range of factors that hinder Latinas on their educational pathways. These included challenges affecting their communities (poverty, immigration status, English proficiency, and parental involvement), as well as challenges “at the intersection of their ethnicity and gender” (stereotypes, discrimination, pregnancy, family responsibilities, and limited involvement in extracurricular activities). Together, these trends illuminate the report’s sobering finding that a gap exists between Latina aspiration (80 percent want to graduate from college) and their hopes for the future (34 percent “do not expect to achieve their educational goals”).

The report provides a comprehensive list of recommendations for schools, communities, and government entities. To download the full report, visit action.nwlc.org/site/PageNavigator/Listening_to_Latinas_Intermediary_Request.

Professor Gender Shown to Affect Women’s Success in STEM

How does a professor’s gender affect female students’ likelihood of pursuing careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)? In “Sex and Science: How Professor Gender Perpetuates the Gender Gap” (published May 2009), Scott E. Carrell, Marianne E. Page, and James E. West suggest some likely correlations between professor gender and female students’ success in STEM based on data collected at the United States Air Force (USAF) Academy.

The authors analyze the grades, graduation rates, and persistence in STEM of students at the USAF Academy, who are randomly assigned to required courses throughout their academic careers. The authors found that having a female professor reduced the gender gap in students’ STEM grades (which typically favors men), particularly among high-achieving students (those with high SAT math scores). While a professor’s gender does not affect a students’ likelihood of dropping out of school before graduation, high-ability female students whose introductory courses were taught by women professors are 26 percentage points more likely to earn degrees in STEM fields than their peers in courses taught by men.

The authors conclude that one possible route to eliminating gender gaps in STEM careers would be to have more high-achieving female students take introductory science courses from female teachers. Their analysis suggests that female professors may have a positive influence on high-achieving young women because they more often employ teaching techniques that appeal to female students (rather than solely because students respond positively to same-gender role modeling). The paper is available for purchase at www.nber.org/papers/w14959.pdf.

Report Examines Transition Points for Women in Science, Engineering, and Mathematics

In June 2009, the National Academies released a new report on “Gender Differences at Critical Transitions in the Careers of Science, Engineering and Mathematics Faculty.” Based on surveys and available data, the report presents a “snapshot” of key transition points on the academic track in six disciplines: biology, chemistry, civil engineering, electrical engineering, mathematics, and physics.

The report suggests that women have higher rates of success than men when applying for tenure-track positions or for tenure review. However, women apply for positions and for tenure at lower rates than men relative to their proportion in the eligible pool. For example, in chemistry, women were 32 percent of PhD recipients, 18 percent of applicants for tenure-track positions, and 29 percent of recipients of first offers. This suggests that women’s attrition occurs not during the hiring and promotion processes, but at indeterminate points on the path to those junctures.

In an attempt to identify why eligible candidates might opt not to apply for employment or promotion, the report examined factors related to climate such as academic outputs and access to institutional resources. It found that although men and women had access to similar resources, men had greater access to research equipment and to clerical support. Men also published more than women, discussed research more often with colleagues, and were less likely to stop the tenure clock.

The report, which identifies a series of questions for future research, is available for purchase or browsing at books.nap.edu/catalog.php?record_id=12062. The executive summary is available at www.nap.edu/nap-cgi/report.cgi?record_id=12062&type=pdfxsum.

College Women Spend Less Time Playing Digital Games than Men

In June 2009, Jillian Winn and Carrie Heeter published the results of a study of the digital gaming habits of undergraduate students at a large Midwestern university. Confirming that men spend more time playing digital games than do women, Winn and Heeter established a relationship between available leisure time and time spent gaming.

The authors discovered that female students not only have less free time than their male peers, but have smaller “chunks” of free time, as they spent more hours per week in paid employment and on homework than men. Not surprisingly, women as a group spent less time playing digital games, and played those games for shorter periods of time, than did their male peers. However, Winn and Heeter established that although students who played more video games spent less time studying, their grades did not suffer accordingly; nor were male “avid gamers” less likely to be in a romantic relationship than their peers who spent less time gaming, although female “avid gamers” were least likely to be in a romantic relationship.

Although the authors postulated that students who did not play digital games might play more often if the market offered more games that appealed to them, avid gamers were actually more likely to express this sentiment. Winn and Heeter suggest that the study results may have implications for future game designs and eventually for the demographics of the gaming industry, where women remain heavily underrepresented. To download the paper, visit www.springerlink.com/content/b83u313172678l58/fulltext.pdf.