“We Service the Taxpayers and Families Where Others Do Not”: A Rural Community College Typology

ABSTRACT

U.S. rural community colleges serve approximately 3.4 million students, yet there is very little research on these institutions. We conducted a mulitple case study to develop a typology of rural community college locations. We gathered and analyzed publicly available data (n = 25) and private institutional data (n = 6) and conducted in-person interviews (n = 27), site visits (n = 7), and telephone interviews (n = 21) across Pennsylvania’s rural community college locations. Our typology includes two main types: the college hub and satellite sites, and six satellite sub-types: focused site, outreach site, scaled hub, virtual site, partner site, and closing site. Our findings indicate the need to adjust state funding formulas to account for the work of rural community college employees and the interdependence of the rural locations, as well as to maximize the use of rural community college locations to the benefit of constituents and communities.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to the many participants who generously shared their time, experiences, and expertise. Without them, this research would not have been possible.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. A branch campus must operate independently from the main campus, but a site does not operate independently from the main campus (Middle States Commission on Higher Education, 2020). In line with these criteria, we use the term “site” or “location” when discussing multi-site community colleges.

2. Pennsylvania does not host any Tribal Colleges.

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by The Center for Rural Pennsylvania