The potential benefits of a closer association between universities and community colleges are significant. By avoiding the expense and stress of an immediate, long-term move to a university town, community colleges can reduce cost for students and increase access. At the same time, the students benefit from the caring atmosphere a community college can provide and their low overhead.
These advantages can be further enhanced by means of new distance education technologies using the World Wide Web. Such technologies allow community college students to experience many of the realities of university life directly. By taking some higher level university classes over the Internet while still at the community college, and using other web access to the university of interest, the student can learn what it feels like to be a university student from the comfort of the community college.
One important benefit from taking some university classes earlier is that it allows community college students to make more informed career decisions. Effective integration of community college students of varying backgrounds, including underrepresented groups, in university classes also gives those students the opportunity to interact with university students of similar backgrounds and even to be motivated or inspired by them. The combination of (a) a more informed career choice, (b) a better understanding of what is important for a university education in the selected field, and (c) the reduced class load while in residence at the university will have a significant impact on access, retention, and completion of community college transfers, as well as significantly reduce cost.
While the technology already exists to provide such access, it is not always easy to apply. A major goal of our program is to make the technology available using standard simple tools that do not require special knowledge or involve additional costs. Any student with basic computer knowledge will be able to set up the needed, generic, software and hardware quickly and easily. No unusual equipment or software will be required. This emphasis on simplicity and generics extends the approach already in use by our department to bring the Master of Science degree program to the World Wide Web [1].