Community Colleges
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Industry Overview
About 1,100 community colleges in the US receive combined annual revenue of $25 billion. Ninety percent of community colleges are publicly operated and 10 percent are operated by private, nonprofit institutions. Slightly less than half of all undergraduate students in the US are enrolled in community colleges. The typical college has 4,000 students and 400 employees, roughly 60 percent of whom are faculty.
Competitive Landscape
Demand for services depends on the demographic composition of the communities that surround a school. Because most are state-mandated institutions, community colleges often have some leeway in balancing their budgets. There is little competition among schools, because admission is usually restricted to residents of surrounding communities. A large proportion of students are part-time.
Products, Operations & Technology
Community colleges offer mainly two-year programs of study that prepare students either for transfer to a four-year college or university, or for direct entry into the workforce; they also offer continuing education for workers. Graduates earn an associates degree or various industry/trade certificates. They are public institutions under state or local control and generally must admit any state resident with a high school diploma. Community colleges usually serve a particular district within a state (California operates 108 colleges in 72 districts), and most of their students live within the district. Some community colleges offer specialized education and some provide training especially for the types of work available in their district. Community colleges differ from four-year colleges in academic quality, program offerings, and finances.
Like other colleges, community colleges hire and manage faculty and support staff, design teaching programs, manage buildings, and may provide non-academic services such as sports. Most don't provide room and board because students typically live at home, near the school. Operations focus on classroom instruction: 45 percent of total expenses are related to direct instruction, versus less than 30 percent at four-year colleges. To minimize expenses, community colleges hire many part-time teachers, typically 65 percent of the faculty. The student/teacher ratio is about 18:1, versus 11:1 at private four-year colleges.
Community colleges provide both academic and occupational courses of study. The leading occupational programs are bookkeeping/accounting, administrative assistant, electronics/computer technician, and nursing. Occupational programs are often designed with the help of skill competencies, lists of the skills that the programs need to teach. To ensure that these skills are actually useful in local business or industry, many colleges get input from industry advisory boards.
