ITHACA, N.Y. -- The late-bloomer whose high school grades aren't good enough to get him into a four-year college or research university; the student whose family can't afford four years of tuition at a private college but, with help, might be able to swing two years; the returning, nontraditional student who seeks a career in a field that requires specific training not offered at four-year programs, such as nursing. These are among the people who have made community colleges the most-popular choice of the majority of eligible college applicants today.

Two-year colleges enroll about 55 percent of all freshmen and about 40 percent of all full-time freshmen throughout the United States, says Ronald G. Ehrenberg, director of the Cornell Higher Education Research Institute (CHERI) and the Irving M. Ives Professor of Industrial and Labor Relations and Economics at Cornell University. "The importance of the two-years is likely to continue to grow as state and federal budgets become tighter and enrollment expands," Ehrenberg says. Given those facts, "The Complex Community College" seems a fitting subject for this year's CHERI annual conference, which takes place on Cornell's campus Monday and Tuesday, Oct. 13 and 14.

The conference, which will be held in 115 Ives Hall, is jointly sponsored by CHERI, the Institute for Community College Development and the Office of Institutional Research and Analysis of the State University of New York (SUNY) system. All presentations are free and open to the public.

"Community colleges are as complex as their research university counterparts, if not more complex," says Ehrenberg. "It's important for us to understand what makes them work and what a critical role they play in the workings of the interdependent systems that make up U.S. higher education today." Nine papers will be presented, addressing such subjects as whether two-year college attendance leads to enrollment and degree completion at more-selective four-year colleges; which four-years are doing the best job of graduating students who transferred from two-year colleges; how community colleges can help underprepared students; and how two-year colleges are financed across the states, why many are becoming less affordable and what can be done about it.

The titles of overall topics to be discussed include: The Complex Roles of Two-Year Colleges; the Transition From Two-Year to Four-Year Colleges; Remedial Education and Training of Displaced Workers; and Financing Two-Year Colleges and Two-Year College Attendance. The dinner speaker on Oct. 13 is Clifford Adelman, from the U.S. Department of Education, whose talk is "The Transitional Institution: The Community College in the Lives of Traditional-Age Students." The Oct. 14 luncheon speaker, F. King Alexander, president of Murray State University, will speak on "Are Federal Financial Aid Policies Fair to Two-Year Colleges."

In addition to Cornell and a range of community colleges, participants are from such universities as Binghamton, Case Western Reserve, Chicago, Harvard, Massachusetts and Rochester and from the Institute for Higher Education Policy, the National Research Council and other organizations. Attendees include educators and policy-makers from across the United States, among them Roderick Chu, Cornell MBA '71, a former New York state tax commissioner and SUNY trustee who now is chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents.

For a full conference schedule and preview of papers, see the CHERI Web site at http://www.ilr.cornell.edu/cheri . For more information, contact Darrlyn O'Connell at

(607) 255-2744.

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