Starting in August 2024, our first project was to gather information based on institutional websites about international education opportunities available at community colleges in the United States. We searched institutional websites for evidence of the following activities: study abroad, international student enrollment, virtual international exchange, certificate or diploma offerings in global learning, resources for faculty and staff to support internationalization efforts, and on-campus international cultural events. You can view the results of our efforts on the map below.
Available now! Access the first report about this project:
International Education at U.S. Community Colleges: Evidence from the 2024-25 Academic Year
Despite its importance in educating a large number of postsecondary students in the United States, community colleges are often marginalized or absent from broader international education conversations, which tend to focus on the four-year university or liberal arts college contexts. The first report based on this dataset counters narratives of marginalization and offers a general overview of the extent to which US community colleges are engaged in international education. (report released August 2025)
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Frequently Asked Questions
How did we define ‘community college’?
To create our dataset, we pulled a list of all higher education institutions in the United States in the 2023-24 academic year and limited the dataset to public institutions falling into the following Carnegie 2021 Basic classifications:
- Associate’s colleges,
- Special-focus two-year institutions, and
- Associate’s/Baccalaureate colleges.
We then removed institutions not located in one of the 50 U.S. states or Washington, DC alongside institutions that were branch campuses of larger, four-year institutions. Our final dataset includes 922 community colleges.
What time frame does this map represent?
This map represents international education opportunities available at U.S. community colleges in the 2024-25 academic year.
How should I cite the dataset?
If you use our dataset in published or presented work, please cite it as follows: Nyarko, C.B., Whatley, M., & Tsai, Y.M. (2025). Community college international education dataset (2024-25). https://ccintled.pages.wm.edu/learn-about-our-research/mapping-community-college-international-education/