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Nationwide, community colleges struggle with how to improve the poor outcomes of students referred to developmental education. Based on a case study of an urban community college system, this paper sets forth an opposing forces framework to help diagnose the underlying issues that may thwart colleges' efforts to improve developmental outcomes. [The authors] identify three sets of opposing forces: system-wide consistency versus institutional autonomy; efficient versus effective assessment; and promotion of student progression versus enforcement of academic standards. Within each set, both goals are important and worthy, but they also tend to work in opposition to one another, creating confusion, frustration, and other barriers to meaningful reform. [The authors] describe how each of the three tensions shape developmental policy and practice. [The authors] also provide suggestions on potential reforms that could bring these apparently opposing forces into alignment and, thus, create a developmental education system that works to meet all its stakeholders' goals.

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Objective: Few community college students who aspire to transfer ever do so. Prior research suggests that relationships with advisors, faculty, and administrators may play an important role in promoting successful transfer outcomes, particularly for traditionally underserved students. This study examines how students identified and weighed possible transfer destination colleges, and how dedicated and personalized advisement shaped students' transfer plans and contributed to their transfer outcomes. Method: This mixed-methods study uses interviews to explore students' transfer planning processes, as well as student record data to examine transfer outcomes. Analyses compare students who received personalized transfer advising through a community college honors program and similarly qualified transfer-aspiring peers attending the same six community colleges who received 'business as usual' advising.

Results: Findings suggest that personalized advisement and relationships with transfer advisors contributed to higher rates of transfer and may support transfer to more-selective destinations. Contributions: This research extends the selectivity of their transfer destinations. We also offer more empirical support for the importance of personal relationships and transfer agents in facilitating successful transfer outcomes. Literature on community college transfer by tracing students' planning processes, exploring factors that raise or lower transfer aspirations, and estimating the effects of an advising-intensive honors program on students' transfer outcomes, including the selectivity of their transfer destinations. We also offer more empirical support for the importance of personal relationships and transfer agents in facilitating successful transfer outcomes.

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With the advent of massive open online courses (or MOOCs), it is theoretically possible for anyone with an Internet connection to access course materials from elite universities - a possibility that some commentators have hailed as a ‘democratization’ of education. Of course, MOOCs are very new, and it is not yet clear how they will affect postsecondary access or attainment, particularly among traditionally underserved populations. To provide some perspective on how MOOCs and other online delivery methods might affect educational equity, in this article [the author] examines recent research on online college coursework (that is, courses in which most or all of the learning experience takes place online) and discuss potential implications for postsecondary access and learning.

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To help guide students through program and course options, all community colleges provide academic advising services. However, to provide the support needed, colleges would have to substantially increase their number of advisers. Given increasing enrollments and decreasing public funding, more cost-effective solutions are needed. This chapter examines the use of technology and other structural changes to encourage comprehensive advising reforms. Using case study data gathered from several community colleges engaged in technology-mediated advising reforms, the authors suggest that e-advising tools may be most effective when they prompt colleges to rethink and restructure delivery of a range of services and programs into a more cohesive and international whole.

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To support the long-term success of underprepared students, many community colleges are experimenting with accelerated developmental education models, which allow students to complete remediation and enroll in college-level math and English within a shorter time frame. This study examines three developmental acceleration programs, including two in English and one in math. Overall, students on accelerated pathways were more likely than a set of matched peers to successfully complete the relevant college-level course within three years. However, to help maintain strong student performance within subsequent college-level courses, accelerated pathways may need to incorporate rigorous content, systematic faculty development, and targeted student supports.

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Using a large administrative dataset from a statewide system including 34 community and technical colleges, the authors employed an instrumental variable technique to estimate the impact of online versus face-to-face course delivery on student course performance. The travel distance between each student's home and college campus served as an instrument for the likelihood of enrolling in an online section of a given course. In addition, college-by-course fixed effects controlled for within- and between-course selection bias. Analyses yield robust negative estimates for online learning in terms of both course persistence and course grade, contradicting the notion that there is no significant difference between online and face-to-face student outcomes - at least within the community college setting. Accordingly, both two-year and four-year colleges may wish to focus on evaluating and improving the quality of online coursework before engaging in further expansions of online learning.

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