This chapter argues that increasing human capital through a combination of university and community college education promotes greater economic growth in developing countries.
Investment in higher education is essential to improve the knowledge and skills of a country's labor force for economic growth. Higher education is a dynamic context with various institution types. However, the higher education market and research has generally suggested a single higher education institution, university education. Such single entity promotion has informed policies to increase university enrollments and completions resulting in a belief that universities are prestigious institutions that provide greater economic growth while stigmatizing community colleges as less prestigious and of little or no value to economic growth. University models have provided higher education to selected members of society which has not met the global demand for education or improved economic growth. This chapter will demonstrate that community colleges are becoming a higher education policy focus for their ability to provide flexible, short cycle education, and new research demonstrates their short- and medium-term economic impact. Thus, the community college stigma is unwarranted.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.