Documenting and Assessing the Role of Community Colleges in Developing Human Capital

The 21st century community college is an institution that espouses the values of open-access and high quality education. The literature is filled with research that documents the extent to which these institutions contribute to society and to human capital development. The purpose of this article is three-fold: First, to apply a human capital framework to the community college context; second, to describe efforts by several states to document and assess their community colleges' contributions to human capital development; and third, to raise research and policy issues related to improving assessment of that role. The article concludes by addressing future research and policy implications.

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