A compilation of ideas, directions, data, etc. After students complete two years at one of the 12 community colleges in the program, they can transfer directly to the university for their junior and senior years. But instead of traveling to the Flagstaff campus, students attend NAU classes at the community college. Twenty university faculty and 18 staff work at the community college. Flagstaff faculty teach about 20 percent of the classes using NAU's two-way video system beamed into Arizona Western classrooms.
Community colleges benefit, too.
The university also paid for 20 percent of Arizona Western's library acquisitions and for 20 percent of the upgrade of the school's computer lab. Although it is a relatively recent development in the history of higher education, urban and metropolitan universities will assume a much greater role in the higher education enterprise of America's future. More than half of all Americans now reside in 40 cities, and 90 percent of the country's population growth during the last decade occurred in metropolitan areas. The universities that serve these areas hold the keys to our future success as a nation. They are decidedly nontraditional when compared with their often larger and more complex major state and land-grant counterparts or with regional institutions in less populated areas.