On Their Own Terms: Two-Year Minority Serving Institutions

By: Thai-Huy Nguyen, Valerie Lundy-Wagner, Andrés Castro Samayoa, Marybeth Gasman, Audrey Wilson, Desmond Diggs, Melanie Wolff, Carolina Dávila, & William Boland | Center for Minority Serving Institutions, Graduate School of Education, University of Pennsylvania | February 2015

This report, published by the Center for Minority Serving Institutions in collaboration with CAPSEE, looks at the role of two-year Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) in improving postsecondary access and degree completion for disadvantaged students in the United States. In doing so, it aims to prepare the groundwork for research that considers the contributions of two-year MSIs on their own terms, as a distinct and crucial institutional type on the landscape of American higher education. The report addresses the following questions:

• What are two-year MSIs?
• Who attends them?
• Where are they located?
• How do they contribute to educational attainment and the workforce?
• What are the critical and unanswered questions that might move our understanding of two-year MSIs beyond mere descriptions and anecdotes?