| This study had two primary purposes. The first goal was to bring the 1993/1996 Katsinas-Lacey two-year college classification system into the 21 st century using data from the 2000 United States Census and the National Center for Education Statistics' Integrated Postsecondary Educational Data System (IPEDS) surveys for the 2000--2001 and 2001--2002 academic years. The second goal was to create a descriptive portrait of the universe of two-year, publicly controlled institutions that primarily offer the associate's degree mapped against the updated classification system and to describe and discern similarities and differences within this particular population by class and subclass in terms of multiple measurable characteristics for which IPEDS data were available.;The study, based upon classification theory utilized in social science and management sciences---particularly the work of Bailey and McKelvey---assessed the efficacy of a number of other recent proposed community college classification systems, the original Katsinas-Lacey system and the revised version of Katsinas-Lacey created through the current research. It found both the original Katsinas-Lacey system and the revised version to meet the criteria for a well-made classification model.;The study includes directories of all colleges and universities in the United States that offer the associate's degree with geographic, census population data, number of campuses and 2000--2001 unduplicated enrollment data for publicly controlled, two-year colleges and districts. Also included are data tables illustrating similarities and differences between colleges and districts in the three major classes and seven subclasses of publicly controlled institutions drawn from IPEDS survey data and detailed profiles of each of these institutional types---Rural, Rural Small, Rural Medium, Rural Large, Suburban, Suburban Single Campus, Suburban Multi-Campus, Urban, Urban Single Campus, and Urban Multi-Campus.;The study concludes with a review of implications for policy and practice, and 25 recommendations for further research related to the revised Katsinas-Lacey classification system. |
