Public Transit and Urban Community College Access

Zyrashae Smith-Onyewu (), Marc L. Stein, Juan B. Cortes, Paula Kim-Christian and Nathaniel Dewey
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Zyrashae Smith-Onyewu: Johns Hopkins University School of Education
Marc L. Stein: Johns Hopkins University School of Education
Juan B. Cortes: Johns Hopkins University School of Education
Paula Kim-Christian: Johns Hopkins University School of Education
Nathaniel Dewey: Johns Hopkins University School of Education

Research in Higher Education, 2025, vol. 66, issue 1, No 5, 29 pages

Abstract: Abstract Community colleges were established as affordable postsecondary education opportunities for all residents within their local areas. Typical measures of access to postsecondary institutions use binary indicators based on the presence of institutions within geographic areas or straight-line distance between student residences and college locations as the underlying metric and implicitly assume that students travel by private vehicles. These factors likely overestimate access within urban areas where relatively large proportions of residents may commute primarily by public transit. In this paper we estimate access based on travel times to community colleges in ten large U.S. cities utilizing public transportation, examine variations in access across those cities, and compare these estimates to distance-based measures of access. We find that access to community colleges based on public transit travel times varies substantially within and across cities and is influenced by each city’s geography and built environment. We conclude with a discussion of how measuring college access by travel time reveals the existence of urban community college access deserts.

Keywords: College access; Community college; Geography of opportunity; Public transportation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1007/s11162-024-09829-z

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