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This review examines the impact of Asian Pacific American (APA) students’ characteristics and experiences on their academic achievement. The article begins by describing the demographics and diversity of this group, and it explores the challenges posed by APA community college students’ background characteristics and influences, the model minority stereotype, and identity development. The limited research that focuses on APA students at community colleges is summarised, as well as broader research on APA students in general. The article concludes with implications for practice and recommendations for future research.

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The purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of faculty working within baccalaureate degree-granting community colleges. Method: Data sources included 16 semi-structured interviews, numerous publicly available organizational documents, and participant observations. Results: Analysis revealed three distinct, yet interconnected themes. In light of the institutionalization of baccalaureate degrees, faculty experienced shifting and intensifying work expectations related to service, research, and research-related activities. These shifts exacerbated existing tensions, which in turn led faculty to live with uncertainty in terms of tenure and promotion, the direction of the college, and whether or not they could thrive in a highly contradictory environment. Contributions: This study adds to the literature concerning the community college baccalaureate - a topic of heightened interest. It is essential that we gain a better understanding of the implications of this trend for faculty, which in turn carry implications for students.

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Providing an accessible and adaptable education has become an increasingly daunting task for community colleges. Administrators must formulate adaptive strategies as well as purposefully articulate them. A content analysis of the mission and vision statements from a nationwide sample of community colleges was performed, and key linguistic components found to constitute a well conceived, viable, and easily diffused institutional vision were isolated. The prevalence of these components in comparison to other types of academic institutions is discussed.

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This study explores the demographic, personal, and professional characteristics of honors and developmental faculty in community colleges. The authors uncover significant racial and ethnic patterns and arrive at a preliminary typology of those who teach at the upper and lower margins of the two-year college curriculum.

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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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Seven urban and rural community colleges in the United States and Canada were examined using a qualitative multiple-case-study design to define changes in the colleges' institutional missions during the 1990s. Group site visits, personal interviews with administrators and faculty, and policy documents provided the data, which were analyzed using an analytical framework drawn from globalization literature. Two iterations of pattern coding and content analysis identified specific themes and patterns in documents, interviews, and observations. Observational data also provided support for emerging patterns. Although most of the interviewees perceived little change in their institutions' missions during the 1990s, the data collected indicated alterations to mission based on global economic concerns. The author summarizes the mission changes at each college and suggests that a new globally oriented vocationalism dominated the community college mission at the end of the twentieth century.

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Differences between researchers and practitioners can be found in four areas: the distance from the object of study; the ideological perspective; the purposes of the research; and the political agenda behind the research. Each of these principles dominates the perceptions of the people involved and thus contributes to the phenomenon of mutual indifference. This divide between research and practice can be bridged through providing community college leadership for research on instruction, fostering cooperation between university-based researchers and community college practitioners, and merging university and community college research methods (such as qualitative research and action research). Researchers and practitioners can speak to one another, but only if they employ a common language.

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This analysis explores student outcomes related to taking developmental English (i.e. reading and/or writing) and math classes in three community colleges in three different states, using institutional data from 7,898 students who began college in the fall of 2009 (Cohort 1) or fall 2010 (Cohort 2). We examine the outcome trajectories of students at each college, considering their enrollment in developmental courses in their first term at college as well as other variables. Several factors helped students persist into the second term of college, and a subset of these was also significantly related to continued persistence, graduation, and higher overall grade point average (GPA). Older students, White/non-Hispanic students, and occupational students were more likely to graduate. These groups, and women, also had higher cumulative GPAs. Math ability at the time of college entrance was a powerful predictor of student success. The utility of reading placement as a predictor, and the utility of developmental English, reading, and writing (DERW) classes as an intervention, were both limited to retention into the second term and/or second year. Financial aid and tutoring were much more clearly related to student success than was developmental coursework.

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Objective - This study examines masculinity in a manner commensurate with established feminist frameworks to deconstruct a patriarchal system that ill-serves both men and women. Method - [The authors] utilized standpoint theory and narrative analysis to examine longitudinal, qualitative data from first-year Black and Latino males as they transition into community college through their second semester. Findings - Positionality is critical to understanding the success of Black and Latino males and their response to institutional structures. In many instances, men leveraged normative constructions of masculinity as aids to their success, and their resilience and confidence were filtered through their perceived development into adults. Conclusion - Implications for practice include the creation of spaces for men to talk about what it means to be a man in college and ways to influence men to make the most of resources when proffered, even if they tend to avoid seeking them out on their own. Further research should seek to understand how men develop and evolve their concepts of masculinity as well as how and to what extent spaces for men actually work to dismantle hegemonic masculinity.

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Purpose: The purpose of this article is to use Victor Ray's theory of racialized organizations (TRO), and multiple applied exemplars, as a framework and call to action for community college researchers and policymakers. In doing so, we provide a meso-level analytic view on how and why the most accessible postsecondary pathway for minoritized students is also the most chronically under-resourced sector of higher education in the United States.

Argument: Understanding community colleges as a type of racialized organization opposes traditional meritocratic perspectives that view these institutions as culturally neutral spaces, guided by open access and unrestricted credential choice. Decades of research suggest that egalitarian principles attached to community colleges do not necessarily translate into equitable student experiences and outcomes. Responses to these inequitable outcomes, however, primarily assign blame to individual dispositions. Without deep consideration of contextual conditions that shape organizational policies and practices, outcome disparities are viewed as a condition of cultural deficits rather than structured impotence.

Conclusions: This paper advances our collective attunement, as community college scholars, to organizational arrangements that perpetuate and weaken white supremacy. In short, we use a racialized organizational lens to think in new ways about how community colleges, as an institutional type, are often as marginalized as the students they serve.

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