An Exploration of Noncredit Community College Enrollment

Nearly 40% of all public community college enrollment is in noncredit courses. While there have been several recent reports on the noncredit function at community colleges, little has been done in terms of large-scale studies and/or statewide analyses on this population. The purpose of this study was to explore one state's community college noncredit student data to identify course types, relationships with demographics, and multi-term enrollment patterns. The authors employed a Cramer's V to identify relationships between enrollment by course type and demographics and conducted a multi-term course analysis on a sample of 122,886 noncredit student records.