Do Community Colleges Respond to Local Needs? Evidence from California

To measure the responsiveness of community colleges to the needs of local employers, Leigh and Gill compare the quality of matches between the occupational distributions of credits completed at community colleges to the occupational distribution of projected new jobs in counties in which community colleges are located. Not surprisingly, they find that colleges differ considerably in their measure of responsiveness, with more responsive colleges tending to be larger, located in suburbs, and recipients of more local funding and per-student revenue.