One of the original missions of the two-year college, the transfer mission was highly criticized in the latterThe community college is unique in its curricular transfer mission. Alone among institutions of higher education, the community college officially prepares students to transfer to four-year colleges and universities by providing the first two years of a bachelor' s degree. This mission was a primary, but not the only, reason for the development of the two-year college. The college has also always provided career education, sometimes referred to as vocational or occupational-technical education. In recent years increasing numbers of community college students have chosen to enter these programs, designed to prepare them for immediate entry into the workplace rather than lead immediately to transfer. In the early 1960s, 26 percent of total enrollments in two-year colleges were in terminal occupational programs; by 1975, it was 35 percent (Cohen and Brawer, 2003), and currently it is over 50 percent. The extent of enrollment in vocational programs varies greatly by state, partly because of state-mandated foci for two-year colleges. However, across the nation, only 49 percent of the degrees awarded by community colleges in 2001-02 were in liberal arts and sciences, general studies, and humanities; 51 percent were in vocationally oriented fields such as business management and administrative services, and health professions and related sciences (Phillippe and Sullivan, 2005).Consequently, some believe that the transfer mission, with its focus on the liberal arts, is at risk. For several decades, critics have charged that some students, particularly those from low socioeconomic backgrounds, were being tracked into vocational programs and away from transfer programs 33 4