Community Colleges: Is There a Lesson in Them for Latin America? Sustainable Development Department Technical Papers Series.

This paper explores the potential the North American community college model holds for Latin America as a means of responding to the expansion of secondary education in this region. The authors propose learning from, not imitating, experiences found in North America and Europe and discuss how these lessons may be of used to inform Latin American educational policy. The paper begins with a brief introduction to the origins of the community college in the United States and highlights a few of the defining characteristics of the community college model: accessibility, accountability, social mobility, and economic benefits for students. The second section of this paper provides a brief introduction to postsecondary education in Latin America and then discusses how insights gleaned from an analysis of the North American community college model might be useful in shaping Latin American educational policy and institutions. The authors conclude that the North American model of community colleges holds very real potential to inspire Latin America to create a similar system tailored to meet the unique demands and needs of the region. Appended is a summary of key descriptive statistics for American community colleges. (Contains 22 references.) (RC)