شبكة المعلومات العربية التربوية

The Current study was aimed at investigating how it is economically feasible to study in community colleges. By surveying over one thousand students, of final semester, males and females, in 50 colleges, the study identified the characteristics of students of community colleges. Also, the study assessed outcomes of community colleges using three indicators: Time the student expects to spend after graduation waiting for job, the expected income after graduation, and the probability of continuing study to gain the bachelor’s degree. Clearly, students of community colleges can be characterized as of low socio-economic backgrounds. They do not expect to be paid high salaries after graduation, although they anticipated shorter search time for job. However, they do not foresee good opportunities to bridge the associate degree to a bachelor’s degree. The multinomial logistic regression showed self confidence to correlate negatively with both time before job and income, but it positively associated with the probability of study continuation. Perhaps because they already influenced decisions of distributing students between institutions of higher education, socio-economic variables made Indicators of Economic Feasibility of Studying in Community Colleges in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Dr. Aeshah S.Alahmadi Fiker17@gmail.com Dr. Nayyaf R. Aljabri njabri@taibahu.edu.sa Key words: Community colleges, economic feasibility studies for education, economics of education, multinomial logistic regression. Research Abstract The Saudi Journal of Higher Education - Issue No.14 - Oct. 2015 15 no significant influence on outcomes of community colleges, although signs of some coefficients were as hypothesized. Males expected quicker employability and higher income but had no different expectations for study continuation. Interestingly, students of colleges located in rural areas held better expectations for employability and income. Students of financial and managerial fields compared favorably to students in applied and medical fields, in terms of the expected income. (Published Abstract)