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...

The literature on the narrowing of the gender wage gap during the 1980s considers, among other factors, the closing of the male-female differential in post-secondary education. This paper looks specifically at the role played by the dramatic relative increase in women's enrollment in two-year...

This paper provides new evidence about the payoffs to community colleges’ terminal training programs as distinct from their traditional transfer function. Using NLSY data, we offer three main findings. First, fouryear college graduates who started at a community college are not at a...