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There has been little research on institutional effectiveness at community colleges. A key challenge is how to compare colleges that serve students with widely varying characteristics. Using transcript-level data on over 150,000 Florida community college students, we estimated the effect on the graduation, transfer, and persistence rates of minority students at each of the 28 Florida community colleges as a proxy for institutional effectiveness. We ranked the colleges based on these estimated effects and selected six colleges for field research - three that had a high impact on minority student success and three that had a low impact. Our fieldwork focused on a set of seven elements of institutional policy, practice, and culture that we hypothesized are important for promoting student success. We found that the high-impact colleges were more likely than the low-impact colleges to coordinate their programs and services to support student success. We also found that minority students were generally more successful in colleges that had support services targeted specifically to their needs. The study suggests that a more important factor for institutional effectiveness than adopting particular policies or practices is how well a college manages and aligns its programs and services to support student success.

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As technological advances and economic globalisation have taken hold in the United States and beyond, the necessary elements for regional success in the emerging economy are no mystery. Regions will thrive or decline based upon how well they cultivate 'knowledge workers': individuals who have postsecondary education credentials, technical savvy, the ability to learn rapidly, and an entrepreneurial approach to employment. Knowledge workers earn higher pay than less skilled workers, and researchers and policy makers increasingly see them as the key to economic development. This white paper lays out the economic justification for career pathways for knowledge workers, describes the process involved and sets the stage for future reporting. 'Career pathways' is described as a particular framework or approach by which regions can better align publicly supported systems and programs to build a knowledge economy workforce customised to the needs of local labour markets. The paper describes how policy makers in a growing number of states and localities and at the federal level in the USA are using the career pathways approach to address the imperative to build a knowledge workforce despite shrinking public resources. Show less

In this report, we present a model for rethinking dual enrollment - through which over 1.5 million high school students take courses for college credit each year - as a more equitable on-ramp to college degree programs that prepare students to secure well-paying, career-path employment in their 20s. We describe emergent efforts by early adopter institutions of whole-college guided pathways reforms to expand access to dual enrollment for students from groups underrepresented in college and to redesign dual enrollment offerings and supports so that students can more readily pursue a postsecondary degree program in a field they are interested in directly after high school. This model, which we call dual enrollment equity pathways (DEEP), reflects a change in mindset from colleges' and high schools' conventional approach to dual enrollment. Conventional dual enrollment programs are sometimes described as 'programs of privilege' because of uneven access and barriers to participation or as 'random acts' because of insufficient intentionality (and advising) in terms of how the coursework can fit into postsecondary pathways aligned to students' interests.

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This guide presents examples and instructions for data analyses colleges can conduct to better understand student enrollments and completions in particular programs. Such analyses can help colleges scrutinize representation of historically marginalized groups in programs leading to greater opportunity after graduation. There is an equity imperative in this effort. Without disaggregating program enrollments with an eye to what those programs lead to - and interrogating and redesigning practices and policies perpetuating inequities - student success reform approaches such as guided pathways will likely continue to reinforce existing racial/ethnic, gender, and socioeconomic stratification. Examining representation across college programs with equity in mind is an important complement to the work colleges are doing to increase completion rates overall and close equity gaps.

The authors recommend that colleges undertake a series of data exercises and reflective discussions based on the following three questions: (1) What programs are our students currently enrolled in? (2) What opportunity does each program lead to in terms of further education (e.g., transfer to bachelor's programs or bridges into more advanced workforce credentials) and/or immediate job prospects and earnings; (3) Which programs lead to greater or lesser opportunity? Is student representation across programs proportionate? Which subgroups of students (by race/ethnicity, gender, socioeconomic status, and age) are underrepresented in higher-opportunity programs? To answer these questions, the authors show how to carry out a set of relatively simple data analyses that colleges can replicate using their own data. Similar analyses can be used to examine program completions.

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This report is designed to help improve transfer student outcomes by helping institutional leaders and policymakers better understand current outcomes and providing them with metrics for benchmarking their performance. The authors propose a common set of metrics for measuring the effectiveness of two- and four-year institutions in enabling degree-seeking students who start college at a community college to transfer to four-year institutions and earn bachelor's degrees. These include three community college measures - transfer-out rate, transfer-with-award rate, and transfer-out bachelor's completion rate - and one measure for four-year institutions - transfer-in bachelor's completion rate. They also examine a fifth measure: the overall rate at which the cohort of students who start at a community college in a given state go on to earn a bachelor's degree from a four-year institution. Using data from the National Student Clearinghouse on more than 700,000 degree-seeking students who first enrolled in community college in 2007, the authors calculated the average outcomes on these measures six years after these students entered college.

Performance on all measures varied widely across individual institutions and states. Institutional characteristics were not strongly correlated with student outcomes at community colleges, suggesting that institutions that serve transfer students well can have better-than-expected outcomes even if they have relatively few resources or more disadvantaged students. Among four-year institutions, transfer students had better outcomes at public institutions, very selective institutions, and institutions with higher socioeconomic status students. Lower income transfer students had worse outcomes than higher income students on almost all measures, though in a few states, the success gap between lower and higher income students was small or nonexistent.

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Helping students gain early momentum is essential not only for improving student success rates and for closing equity gaps but also for countering declining community college enrollments. To build back enrollments, community colleges need to substantially increase retention as well as recruitment, particularly among students from underserved groups. Community College Research Center (CCRC) has developed a framework that we call Ask-Connect-Inspire-Plan (ACIP) for colleges to use to enrich entering students' experiences in exploring, choosing, and planning a program of study. The ultimate aim of the ACIP framework is to increase retention among students, especially those who are likely to stop out in response to prevailing college practices. This brief describes the motivation, research evidence, and equity implications that underlie the ACIP framework as a useful strategy for colleges.

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Investing in community colleges is a central part of the Biden administration's education agenda, with the goal of strengthening America's middle class and opening the benefits of education to all Americans. [Community College Research Center] CCRC has conducted 25 years of research on how community colleges can more effectively educate students and set them up to successfully transfer to a four-year college, launch a family-sustaining career, or upskill to get a better job. Our research has led to the conclusion that systemic, whole-college reform is needed to reach all students and to help many more of them reach their goals.

Guided Pathways is a comprehensive reform approach whereby community colleges fundamentally redesign their programs and support services in ways that create clearer, more educationally coherent pathways to credentials with strong labor-market value. It is currently being implemented by hundreds of colleges across the country. Guided Pathways is not an intervention but rather a framework that the federal government, states, and colleges can use to strengthen community colleges and improve student outcomes. In this brief, we explain what Guided Pathways is, why we think it has promise, what it costs, and how it can help improve student success on a large scale and thus grow a stronger, more prosperous, and more inclusive middle class.

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Objective: The objective of this study was to describe practices of 2- and 4-year institutional partnerships effective in supporting transfer student success. Method: Using student records from the National Student Clearinghouse (NSC) for the entire 2007 fall cohort of first-time-in-college community college students nationwide, researchers identified partnerships of 2- and 4-year institutions that were more effective than expected (controlling for student and institutional characteristics) in enabling community college entrants to transfer to a 4-year institution and earn a bachelor's degree. Based on this methodology, and in partnership with the Aspen Institute's College Excellence Program, researchers visited six pairs of 2- and 4-year college transfer partnerships identified as high performers, interviewing more than 350 faculty, student-facing and senior-level staff, and transfer students.

Results: From these in-depth interviews, researchers identified a set of essential transfer practices common among these highly effective institutional partnerships. The practices were grouped under three broad strategies: (a) make transfer a priority, (b) create clear programmatic pathways with aligned high-quality instruction, and (c) provide tailored transfer advising. Contributions: This study offers a set of essential transfer practices culled from national fieldwork to 2- and 4-year institutional transfer partnerships identified using NSC data as highly effective in supporting transfer student success.

Published abstract reprinted by permission of the copyright owner.

Special issue: 'Transfer matters', guest edited by Mark M. D'Amico and Matt S. Giani. Show less

Most entering community college students intend to transfer and earn a bachelor's degree - so many that four-year institutions would not be able to accommodate them all as incoming freshmen. Community colleges greatly expand [the US's] postsecondary capacity, serving as the entry point to higher education for over 40 per cent of US undergraduates. With their low tuition and open-access mission, community colleges serve many students who either cannot afford to attend a university for all four years or do not meet the more selective admissions criteria of many four-year institutions. Vertical transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions therefore offers a critical avenue for upward mobility for many underserved students, including low-income, first-generation, and racial/ethnic minority students, all of whom are disproportionately represented at community colleges.

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In October 2020, CCRC published 'Funding guided pathways: a guide for community college leaders' (Jenkins et al.) [available in VOCEDplus at TD/TNC 143.655], which was designed to help college leaders understand the costs involved in implementing guided pathways reforms and develop plans for funding and sustaining them. The guide was based on field research at six colleges chosen to represent a range of institutions by region, governance structures (e.g., union vs. non-union), and size. Only one of these colleges, however, was a smaller institution: Cleveland State Community College in Tennessee, which enrolls approximately 3,200 students in credit programs.

In our presentations, workshops, and institutes on guided pathways, we often hear from small colleges that the challenges they face in implementing guided pathways reforms are notably different from those facing larger colleges. In particular, smaller colleges lack economies of scale that can generate revenue to support investments in technology, staff training, and release time for staff to participate in reforms. Taking on the multi-year systemic change process involved in implementing guided pathways in a small college means that faculty and staff, who already wear many hats, have to take on even more roles and responsibilities to plan and manage the process.

This report summarizes lessons learned about how small colleges can fund and sustain guided pathways reforms. It is based on activities at three small Ohio community colleges that have made large-scale changes in practice based on the guided pathways model over the past several years. These colleges - North Central State College, Washington State Community College, and Zane State College - have successfully implemented these reforms in an environment that has challenged community colleges, especially smaller institutions.

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