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‘Breaking Through’ is a multi-year initiative of Jobs for the Future and the National Council for Workforce Education funded by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the North Carolina GlaxoSmithKline Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. ‘Breaking Through’ is helping community colleges identify and develop institutional strategies that can enable low-skilled adult students to enter into and succeed in occupational and technical degree programs at community colleges. As a major strand in the initiative, the Ford Foundation has funded research on ways to support these institutional strategies in state policy, as summarized in this overview.

State policymakers can harness the power of the community colleges to address the issues of economic growth and individual prosperity. To do so, they must address six key tasks. (1) Create a shared vision of the state’s economic future among key stakeholders in education, workforce development, and economic development - a vision that includes the reasons why increasing the number of adults with postsecondary credentials is crucial; (2) Set measurable goals for achieving the vision, including increasing postsecondary access for lower-skilled adults, and ensure that funding flows in ways that support progress toward those goals; (3) Track individual outcomes across workforce education services and into the labor market, in order to identify trouble spots and document successful approaches with an especially close look at outcomes for lower-skilled students; (4) Help community colleges connect in a broader, more strategic way with local employers, in order to link their needs to for-credit college offerings and to help lower-skilled adults get good jobs in demand in the local labor market; (5) Overhaul the content and delivery of adult education, English as a Second Language, and college remediation, in order to accelerate progress and connect these services closely to occupational pathways in the colleges; and (6) Create and expand more flexible and comprehensive financial aid strategies and more personalized career and academic counseling and support, in order to support postsecondary access and success for lower-income adults.

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Featured article include: 'Meeting the challenge' by Corey Murray and Ellen Ullman (pp. 22-29), in which the authors highlight community colleges' aim to again make the U.S. the world's number one producer of skilled graduates; 'Re-imagining the community college' by Barbara Jones-Kavalier and John Rouche (pp. 30-37), which notes that community college leaders need to employ creativity and innovation to help colleges meet the changing needs of students; 'Pell power' by David Baime and Christopher Mullin (pp. 38-42), which reports on how the Pell grant, a popular long-standing federal grant program, continues to prove its worth for community college students; 'Ready for prime time' by Roxanne Fulcher, Peggy Honore, Brenda Kirkwood and Richard Riegelman (pp. 44-51), which discusses the need for public health education to be integrated into all community college undergraduate education, as well as four-year courses; 'A good fit' by Bob Violino (pp. 52-56), examines how community colleges weigh up the potential benefits, and drawbacks of outsourcing; 'Year one' by Angela Oriano-Darnall (pp. 58-62), in which the authors look at how colleges can improve student retention by gauging progress for entering students. Show less

Through comparative methods the thesis will concentrate on the common features in the nature and development of community colleges in the United States of America, Canada and England. The insights gained will then be used to examine the influences behind the origins and developments of Australian community colleges. In the case of the U.S.A. and Canada the study inevitably makes considerable reference to developments within the broader tertiary educational contexts in which their community colleges operate. English community colleges, when compared with North American community colleges, present difficulties as they operate within the secondary sector. The difficulties are not insuperable as all 'community colleges' regard themselves in varying degrees as having some kind of special relationship however nebulous or well-defined with a 'community', particularly its adult component, and, at a general level, experience similar problems in attempting to cope with this relationship. Further, the thesis assumes that, unlike the U.S.A. and Canada where the basic institutional patterns at the post-secondary level have been established in most cases for at least a decade, England is in the process of evolving new institutional patterns partly in response to the increased demands for access to further and higher education, particularly from the 16-19 age group. There is material in this transitional process for comparison, albeit speculative, between North American community colleges and some institutions such as the tertiary colleges which show signs of adopting parallel functions at similar levels within the broader tertiary educational sectors of England.

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Community colleges serve a diverse student population; 16 per cent of these students are single parents, and a majority of that group are single mothers. Of all household types in the United States, those headed by single women continue to have the highest poverty rates. In 2010, 32 per cent of households headed by single females were poor, compared to 16 per cent of those headed by single males and six per cent of married couple households. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that low income single mothers who enroll in community colleges may face a range of challenges as they persist to degree or transfer. This report sheds light on the range of responsibilities that low-income single mothers must balance in order to persist in community colleges, and describes what helps and hinders their efforts to do so.

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Fifty years ago, state policymakers and higher education officials adopted California's Master Plan for Higher Education. This plan still largely defines policies concerning the state's public higher education systems: the California community colleges (CCC), the California State University (CSU) system, and the University of California (UC) system. Most would agree that the Master Plan has served California and its students well for many decades. Today, however, higher education in California faces two crises: the budget problem and the education skills gap - an impending shortfall of the projected supply of college graduates relative to demand. Updating key components of the Master Plan is a crucial part of the effort to close the education skills gap.

This report proposes three strategic modifications to the plan: eligibility goals for the CSU and UC systems should be gradually increased to new levels by 2025. The share of the state's high school graduates eligible for UC should grow from the top 12.5 per cent to the top 15 per cent of high school graduates. The share eligible for CSU should grow from the top 33.3 per cent to the top 40 per cent; the Master Plan should set explicit goals for transfer from the community colleges to UC and CSU. A target for larger shares of bachelor's degrees awarded to transfer students at both systems should be defined; and a new component of higher education policy that focuses on outcomes - specifically, completion rates - should be added to the Master Plan.

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Objective: Performance funding (PF) policies allocate a portion of state funding to colleges based on student outcomes. This study is the first to account for policy type and design differences, and explores the impact of performance funding on three levels of credential completions: short-term certificates, medium-term certificates, and associate's degrees. Method: We create a panel dataset of 751 two-year colleges from years 1990 to 2013 using data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System. We conduct a series of analyses using difference-in-differences with the inclusion of college- and state-level control variables.

Results: We find that, on average, performance funding produces no significant changes in completions of any of the three credentials. Policy types characterized by a greater proportion of funding tied to the base budget, mission differentiation in performance metrics, inclusion of underrepresented student metrics, and longer periods of operating years produce an increase in short-term certificates, no significant change in medium-term certificates, and a decrease in associate's degrees. Contributions: This study's findings suggest that because awarding more short-term certificates is a relatively quick and cost-effective way to capture performance funds, colleges might be engaging in a path of least resistance by churning out short-term certificates and redirecting focus away from associate's degrees, which is concerning given that short-term certificates generally offer limited labor market benefits compared to medium-term certificates and associate's degrees. Our results also underscore the importance of policy designs in explaining differential impacts on credential completion.

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We estimate the impact of increases in Federal student aid and higher education funding, such as the recently proposed American Graduation Initiative (AGI), on the outcomes of community colleges, including enrollments, list and average tuitions, and educational quality. We develop a reduced form model of state-level education policy in which state policy makers, who have objectives that differ from those of Federal policy makers, respond to changes in Federal policies. Our empirical specification treats state and institutional variables as endogenous; we interpret the coefficients as measuring the responses of state and institution officials to changes in Federal policies. We simulate the effects of AGI and find little evidence that states recapture Federal education resources. AGI would have a significant effect on educational quality but a limited effect on enrollments. An equivalent increase in Federal student aid would have greater impact on access and enrollments, but decrease educational quality.

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Featured articles include: ‘Stronger bonds’ by Lisa Skari and Ellen Ullman (pp. 20-25), which discusses the six building blocks for a better alumni programe; ‘States trend toward performance funding’ by Jim Hermes (pp. 26-31), which notes that as college completion becomes a priority, more state legislatures are challenging community colleges to demonstrate progress by tying funding measures to institutional performance; ‘Why yell when you can talk’ by Bob Violino (pp. 32-35), which discusses how to keep union meetings civil and productive; and ‘Democracy’s colleges’ by George R. Boggs (pp. 36-39), which looks at the evolution of the community college in America. Show less

The focus of this issue is on 'policy', and the feature articles include: 'Expanding the reach of Dual-Enrollment programs' by Thomas Bailey and Melinda Mechur Karp (p. 8-11) which analyses a report from the Community College Research Center examining dual enrolment legislation across the US; 'The promise of community colleges' by Kay McClenney (p. 12-14) which discusses recent survey results indicating that community colleges are highly valued by society, and recognised as providing access to quality higher education and job training to everyone; 'Successful community college fund-raising programs' by Spencer Anderson (p. 19-20) which outlines the characteristics of an effective fund-raising program, and the marketing practices that contribute to success; 'Hiring minority faculty: success in Texas' by Read Peoples and Albert B. Smith (p. 26-29) which offers an exploration of how policies to increase the hiring of minority faculty could have substantial national effects; 'Increasing enrollment through profit sharing' by Marie Czach and Bruce H. Aldrich (p. 30-33) which reports on a unique situation at one Illinois college where employees received end-of-year profit-sharing bonuses linked to increases in student enrolment, and finds that four years after it's implementation student enrolment has increased by 73 per cent; 'Competing for foreign direct investment' by Kenneth Lanza and Tessie San Martin (p. 34-37) which describes the opportunities and challenges that foreign direct investment offer community colleges; 'Community college funding: adopting a team approach' by Thomas E. Terrell (p. 44-47) which argues that adopting a team approach is the best strategy for breaking through political barriers. Show less

Community colleges in America are now very visible and highly respected institutions of higher education. More than 1,000 community colleges in all 50 states now comprise nearly 25 per cent of all colleges and universities in the US, with over 6.5 million students, or about 45 per cent of all college students. State and local governance and coordination of community colleges vary from single-state governing boards to minimal state control and strong local governing boards. The relative degrees of state and local control of community colleges generally ‘follow the money’, in that accountability to state and local governing board and state legislatures is generally about proportional to the funds provided by each level of government. Funding for operational support of community colleges comes primarily from state and local governments, with considerable federal support for grants and subsidized loans to students. In 2000-2001, the largest proportional funding sources for community colleges were: state governments (44.6 per cent), local governments (19.5 per cent), tuition and fees (19.5 per cent) and the federal government (5.4 per cent). State lotteries in at least 38 states represent a relatively new source of funds for community colleges, often in the form of student scholarships. Many of the earliest public junior colleges charged no tuition, especially in California in the early 1900s. Now many community college students pay $3,000 or more per year in tuition and fees, and recent annual tuition increases in many states have been in double digits. This is a troubling trend that threatens to reduce access to higher education for poor people.

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