Projects
Lumina Foundation Study of Noncredit Course Activity
Project background
One of the most critical issues facing community colleges is the tremendous increase in the amount of noncredit course activity. Noncredit courses are the most flexible and diverse of institutional offerings. They are the greatest lever institutions have at their disposal to quickly respond to the needs of business, industry and community. Noncredit courses may include any and all subjects, from completion of Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE) training to cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Some classes meet just once for a few hours, while others meet regularly over the course of a semester, mimicking the traditional academic calendar.
Project focus: the growth in noncredit course offerings
The focus of this project, funded by the Lumina Foundation as part of a University of Virginia (UVa) grant to study nontraditional learners, is on the growth in noncredit courses that allow students to increase their job marketability and access to the market place. It is expected that there will be a great range of course offerings documented, including many disciplines and subjects, modes of delivery, student populations, and a variety of flexible schedules. Primary interest will be placed on course offerings such as "welfare to work," adult reentry into the workforce, technology training and certification, apprenticeships, and efforts to bridge the digital divide. Most of these are not academic in nature and therefore do not award any form of credit. There is also a thin border between some of these preparatory courses and remediation, which is not the focus of this study.
What can be learned from the data
With these data, policy analysts and researches will better understand how the changing nature of institutional mission (as seen with burgeoning enrollment in noncredit course enrollments) is related to issues of access and economic productivity. It is expected that a previously hidden portrait of postsecondary education will emerge, one which documents the vast and growing field of noncredit adult learning.
Every attempt will be made to understand how institutions develop and maintain documentation on these courses, which very often are not recorded in traditional student information systems but in shadow systems kept by continuing education and facilities planning staff. With this, some noncredit data will not be collected or will need to be parsed out; for example, data on adult leisure activities and remediation.
Conducting the project survey
While some states have attempted to collect these data, there is no national statistical portrait of the impact of non-credit classes in the United States. Therefore, the project team chose to conduct a stratified, random sample survey of two and four-year institutions to estimate the amount of noncredit course activity, as well as to determine emerging trends in this area.
Several steps have been taken with this effort:
- the project team worked with state agencies and other associations to assess the previous success of attempts to collect these data.
- an analysis was done of the utility and promise of existing administrative information systems for collecting and reporting these data. The results are somewhat anticipated - that these data are not collected centrally.
- a survey was developed to collect these data, pilot tested at a handful of institutions.
- after adjustments and improvements gleaned from the pilot test, a survey was administered, with the results analyzed in order to make generalizations about the amount and nature of non-credit course activity.
Presentation of survey results
The project team worked closely, especially with postsecondary association staff, to make the survey as useful as possible and relevant to emerging policy issues. Several papers were presented at national conferences with the results of the survey, and these will be prepared for publication in a New Directions for Higher Education chapter, entitled The Role of Non-Credit Courses in Serving Non-Traditional Students. (PDF, 188k)
