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During Fall of 2009, MPICT conducted preliminary analysis of
2007/2008 data on ICT related programs at community colleges
in California.
The State Chancellor’s office collects data for California
Community Colleges. There is nothing new about that. MPICT’s
work is interesting, because it is the first effort to
gather California community college program data under an
ICT framework.
ICT, though dominant in the rest of the world, is not widely
adopted in the U.S., and data for closely related programs
is frequently viewed separately here, at the cost of not
recognizing the true scale and importance of ICT.
These data represent ICT related course enrollments in 16
Taxonomy of Program (TOP) codes from 110 California
community colleges in 72 college districts:
A. 500 Business and Management
1. 505 Business Administration
2. 509 Marketing
3. 514 Office Technology
4. 518 Customer Service
B. 600 Media and Communications
5. 601 General Media and Communications
6. 607 Technical Communications
7. 614 Digital Media
C. 700 Information Technology
8. 701 General IT
9. 702 Software/Hardware
10. 706 Computer Science (transfer)
11. 707 Programming
12. 708 Computer Infrastructure
13. 709 Internet/E-Commerce
14. 799 Other IT
D. 800 Education
15. 860 Educational Technology
E. 900 Engineering and Industrial Technology
16. 934 Electronics/Electrical
This is a mapping of TOP codes to a definition of ICT.
Overall, there were over 591,000 student enrollments in ICT
courses at California Community Colleges during the 2007/2008
academic year. Of these, approximately 243,000 were in the
MPICT region. About 554,000 of the 591,000 ICT enrollments
were for credit. Of these for credit enrollments, about
300,000 were completed with a grade of A, B, C or Pass. Total
enrollment by TOP code is summarized in the following chart.
Most people believe most ICT students are male. According to
this data, it depends. It appears that females gravitate
toward segments of ICT, like customer service and office
tech roles, with more people interaction, and away from more
isolated technical roles.
If we consider another 120,000 non-credit ICT class
enrollments at community college adult continuing education
programs, ages in California community college ICT classes
range from 12 to 92, averaging 32.
ICT related programs are frequently evaluated based on the
numbers or percentages of students who acquire program
degrees and certificates. Interestingly, only 13% of
enrollees in non-adult school ICT related programs self
report that a 2 year degree or vocational certificate is
their goal in taking ICT classes. Some 36% want to pursue a
4 year degree. The rest are seeking general knowledge or job
skills.
Most are continuing (55%) or returning (17%) students.
While the largest percentage of enrollees in ICT classes in
California community colleges are white (35%), the student
population is extremely diverse.
More than half (55%) of enrollees in ICT courses have so far
only received a high school diploma as their highest level
of academic achievement, but 11% already have at least a
bachelor’s degree, and there are a lot of other student
populations served.
Of course, the story is more complex than these initial
results indicate. A significant portion of enrollment in ICT
related programs is students obtaining knowledge and skills
to become proficient users of ICT, to acquire digital
literacy, or what MPICT calls ICT literacy. Many students do
not extend their studies of ICT beyond initial survey
courses, and demographic profiles change for more advanced
and specialized courses. For example, ¾ of enrollments in
the Educational Technology TOP code have at least a
bachelor’s degree.
Course and program TOP codes are selected by colleges and
approved by the State Chancellor's office. There is little
consistency in where ICT programs reside. Sometimes, they
are in business divisions; sometimes in engineering
technology, or in computer or information science. Some
Colleges have created new departments to better reflect the
different facets of ICT. All that may affect the quality of
the data.
There were 120,000 students enrolled in classes at adult
schools, generally not counted in these results, but which
could affect these findings.
Respecting these and other possible shortcomings of this
study, we can still conclude that community colleges have
students in a huge number of ICT related classes in
California. The student population is very diverse. There
are definitely opportunities to improve the gender and
racial diversity of more advanced and specialized ICT
courses, but there are definitely women and other
traditionally underserved populations at least being exposed
to ICT in community colleges. California community colleges
have a huge strategic role in pushing ICT knowledge and
skills out into California communities and workplaces.
Many thanks to Dr. Joshua Callman for his help on this!
Back to Q4 2009
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