Appears to be an oversight -- we can workaround like this.

I used my getaview script as SYS to suck out the definition of user_tab_partitions and user_tables.

------------ getaview -------------------------
set heading off
set long 99999999
set feedback off
set linesize 1000
set trimspool on
set verify off
set termout off
set embedded on

column column_name format a1000
column text format a1000

spool &1..sql
prompt create or replace view &1 (
select decode(column_id,1,'',',') || column_name column_name
from user_tab_columns
where table_name = upper('&1')
order by column_id
/
prompt ) as
select text
from user_views
where view_name = upper('&1')
/
prompt /
spool off

set termout on
set heading on
set feedback on
set verify on
-------------------------------------------------

then, looking at user_tab_partitions -- I found that the compressed column was really:

decode(bitand(s.spare1, 2048), 2048, 'ENABLED', 'DISABLED'),

and that s was a correlation name for sys.seg$. I modified the user_tables create view statment in the following way:

1) changed the view being created to my_user_tables
2) added a column name compressed to the end of the list of columns
3) added the above decode -- unchanged since this query also aliased sys.seg$ as "S"
4) created the view (as sys or sysdba -- I was actually sysdba which is sys)
5) created a public synonym
6) granted select on it

you can use this view until they correct this oversite.

do NOT just add this to user_tables, that could have serious unintended side effects elsewhere!