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THE TOP 100: ASSOCIATE RANKINGS

This year, Diverse has added a new addition to its annual Top 100 degree producers series — recognizing, with this edition, the institutions that award the most associate degrees to students of color. More than half of minority undergraduate students start their degree quest at a community college with 55 percent of all Hispanic and Native American students and 46 percent of all Black and Asian students enrolling in a two-year institution, according to the American Association of Community Colleges.

The following tables show which institutions confer the largest number of associate degrees to minorities, collectively, and to each racial/ethnic group, individually. Visit diverseeducation.com for a breakdown of top-producing institutions by specific disciplines and fields, such as business administration, education and nursing.

Methodology

The tables in this edition of the Top 100 associate degree analysis reflect degrees conferred during the 2007-2008 academic year as of mid-March 2009 by the vast majority of U.S. postsecondary institutions, as reported to the Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) through the Completions Survey of the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data Set (IPEDS). These preliminary data are complete and accurate for those institutions included in the analysis.

Through the IPEDS Completion Survey, institutions report data on the number of associate degrees and other formal awards conferred in academic, vocational and continuing professional education programs. Institutions report their data according to the Classification of Instructional Program (CIP) codes developed by NCES. CIP codes provide a common set of categories allowing comparisons across all colleges and universities.

Racial/ethnic identity information is self-reported by students, who are offered a set of categories from which to choose. These categories can differ from one institution to another, but institutions report enrollment or degrees to the federal government according to standard federal categories: U.S. citizens or permanent residents are categorized as African-American and non-Hispanic, Native American or Alaskan Native, Asian or Pacific Islander, Hispanic, White and non-Hispanic, and race/ethnicity unknown. All non-U.S. citizens who are not permanent residents are categorized as non-resident alien, regardless of their race/ ethnicity.

This analysis is restricted to accredited, Title IV-eligible institutions located in the 50 United States and Washington, D.C., therefore excluding institutions from U.S. territories and protectorates and U.S. military service schools.

The institutions appearing in the published lists are ranked according to the total number of degrees awarded to minority students across all disciplines. Each list provides the total for the prior year (2006-2007), followed by the current year (2007-2008) counts for males, females and totals. The final two columns show two percentages. The first percentage indicates how the number of minority degree recipients at that institution compares to all degree recipients at that institution. The second percentage column indicates the percentage change in that minority groups’ number of graduates at that institution from the prior year.

The lists containing total degrees for each and all minority groups include 100 institutions. A given list may have slightly fewer or more institutions because of ties in the rankings.



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