Community College Review

The authors examine the relationship between institutional spending patterns and performance funding standards at the 14 public community colleges in Tennessee, the first state to implement performance funding standards for its community colleges. Performance standard scores and data on expenditures by category were analyzed to determine the percent of revenue spent by function in relationship to individual and aggregated performance standard scores for the colleges. The analyses revealed a relationship between expenditure categories and performance standard scores, with higher scoring colleges spending a greater portion of funds on academic support and instruction than lower scoring colleges.

Data from the National Student Loan Data System and a college's student data base for cohort years 1993, 1994, and 1995 yielded descriptive statistics on 260 borrowers who defaulted on student loans at one public two-year college. After describing characteristics associated with defaulters, the author provides supporting information from a qualitative survey that elicited perceptions about loan defaulters from 12 respondents representing students, faculty, and staff at the college. Findings indicate that student background characteristics play as great a role in loan default behavior as institutional influences, and the author provides suggestions for future research and policy efforts.

A quantitative survey directed at all faculty at a California urban community college yielded data from 117 faculty about computer use, competency, and attitudes toward using computers. Correlation analysis, multiple regression, and Ordinary Least Squares regression were used to delineate the relationships between computer use and other variables and to develop a path analysis model depicting the relationship among attitude, courses taken, having a home computer, competency, and computer use. The researchers present their model along with data obtained from an open-ended qualitative survey administered to elucidate further the relationships among these variables. Based on their quantitative and qualitative findings, the authors make suggestions for future research to assist in faculty development efforts.

The author describes a cooperative purchasing effort initiated by Florida community colleges and extended to all the state's postsecondary institutions that has resulted in some $33 million in savings on computer technology purchases for participating institutions. This report describes how the resulting Technology Refresh Program has assured the continual upgrading and maintenance of computers purchased by the institutions and provided faculty, staff, and students with the opportunity to join the cooperative program for personal computer purchases.

After presenting a comprehensive definition of service learning in postsecondary education, the author reviews the literature on service learning at community colleges. In addition to discussing national initiatives to promote service learning experiences for students, this review provides examples of service learning programs and summarizes best practices for starting and managing such programs based on case studies in the literature. The results of recent program evaluation efforts are discussed, and the author defines current research needs to determine how service learning affects students.