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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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This essay describes the purpose and origins of this special issue on short-cycle higher education in Europe and the impact that the Bologna process has had on short-cycle programs in selected countries. Similarities and differences between short-cycle programming in Europe and in the United States (largely through community colleges) are noted.

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Research on labor market outcomes for individuals who enroll in technical colleges is limited, with even less attention to the effects of short-term certificates than associate degrees. Also, despite the importance of manufacturing programs, there is a lack of research on employment outcomes for individuals who enroll in these programs at technical colleges. In this study, [the authors] explored how types of credential earned are related to employment outcomes four years post-enrollment for students in manufacturing programs at public two-year technical colleges in Wisconsin. [The authors] drew upon administrative and wage data on over 6,000 first-time students matriculating into manufacturing-related programs at Wisconsin's technical colleges between July 1, 2007, and June 30, 2009. [The authors'] analyses revealed that students, particularly males, who completed an associate degree or a two-year technical diploma were at an advantage in both rates of employment and earnings. White male students also enjoyed a stronger likelihood of being employed and earned higher annual wages than their ethnic minority counterparts. These advantages were not as manifest among female students.

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Objective: We estimated the correlations between the 'pathways' chosen by community college students - in terms of desired credentials and fields of study, as well as other choices and outcomes along the paths - and the attainment of credentials with labor market value. We focused on the extent to which there were recorded changes in students' choices over time, whether students made choices informed by their chances of success and by labor market value of credentials, and the impacts of choices on outcomes. Method: Using micro-longitudinal administrative data on a full cohort of Kentucky community college students, we provide summary data on a range of pathway characteristics and outcomes, as well as binomial and multinomial logit estimates of how pathway characteristics affect the odds of completing different kinds of credentials. Some of the logit estimates were based on random or fixed effects models.

Results: We found that several characteristics of chosen pathways, such as field of study and desired credential as well as early 'momentum', affected outcomes. Student choices of pathways - and especially differences by gender and academic readiness - sometimes ran strongly counter to information about later chances of success in terms of probabilities of completing programs and attaining strong earnings. Students also changed pathways quite frequently, making it harder to accumulate the credits needed in their fields. Contributions: Attainment of credentials with greater market value by community college students could likely be improved by appropriate guidance and supports for them along the way and perhaps by broader institutional changes as well.

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Objectives/research question: This study aims to explore who transfers between 2-year colleges (lateral transfer students) and how these students fare in terms of degree attainment. More specifically, this research explores two research questions: (1) What are the predictors of lateral transfer? (2) Is lateral transfer associated with degree attainment outcomes, time to earn a degree, or cumulative loan debt by the sixth year?

Methods: Using the Beginning Postsecondary Students 12:17 data, I compared lateral transfer students to students who never transferred (non-transfer students) to identify the predictors of lateral transfer and examine degree attainment outcomes. I used multinominal logit, logistic regressions, and inverse-probability-weighted regression adjustment matching models.

Results: Lateral transfer students were more likely to be female and take college courses in high school than non-transfer students. Six years later, lateral transfer students were more likely to earn all types of college credentials, except for an associate degree, complete a degree more quickly, and still attend college if they had not yet earned a credential than non-transfer students. However, lateral transfer students took out a greater amount of federal loans than non-transfer students.

Conclusions: Given the positive degree attainment outcomes, policymakers, and practitioners should reconsider the role of lateral transfer in the college completion agenda and pay more attention to why students make lateral transfers and the nature of their college pathways. This study suggests that lateral transfer has great potential to improve persistence and graduation for students who start their education at a community college.

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Background: Most community college students from low-income families have ambitious educational degree goals, but only a small fraction attains them. For many decades, sociologists have primarily attributed this problem to a cooling out process in which college practitioners diminish students' educational ambitions using academic reorientation processes that encourage the least-promising students to lower their degree goals. The cooling out explanation focuses exclusively on the actions of institutional community college actors rather than other factors affecting student decisions and thus has been used to vilify community colleges as engines of inequality. Objective: This article addresses an alternative hypothesis, considering whether student financial aid, the ubiquitous and multifaceted system that community college actors mainly do not control, influences students' educational goals.

Method and results: Using data from an experimental study of need-based financial aid in Wisconsin, I find that a private grant program, which triggered a repackaging of students' financial aid awards, decreased the educational degree aspirations and expectations of 2-year college students, on average. Contributions and implications: Although counterintuitive, this finding is consistent with the idea that the complex manner in which aid is delivered creates confusion and uncertainty about the actual costs of college. While these lowered degree goals persisted over time, they did not affect degree attainment rates, suggesting students' expectations may be more malleable and less consequential than prior research suggests. This article demonstrates that the observed cooling out phenomenon is not necessarily the result of a meritocratic sorting system and involves processes previously neglected by sociological theory. A more robust model of college choices is needed.

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Objectives: We explore the influence of initial enrollment at a community college on the attainment of a bachelor's degree. Methods: Using the Beginning Postsecondary Students Longitudinal Study (BPS: 12/17) and propensity score analysis, we compare baccalaureate degree outcomes of recent high school graduates who reported their intention to earn a bachelor's degree and initially enrolled at a community college to those students who began at a 4-year institution.

Results: We found initial enrollment in a community college has a negative effect on bachelor's degree attainment. Our findings are consistent across varying outcome and sample specifications. The magnitude of our findings is consistent with a recent meta-analysis. We found that almost two-thirds of our sample who started at a community college enrolled in a 4-year institution, a fact that has important implications for practice.

Contributions: Given the recent research suggesting that more comprehensive programs can drastically increase community college students' attainment (e.g., CUNY ASAP), we advocate for additional supports for bachelor's degree-intending community college students. Since the majority of those who start their education at a community college enroll in a 4-year institution, we add to the growing call that discussions about ways to improve the success of bachelor's degree-intending community college students must include 4-year institutions as partners.

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Career and technical education (CTE) students pursuing occupational associate’s degrees or certificates differ from students seeking academic majors at 2-year institutions in several ways. This article examines several theoretical models of student persistence and offers a conceptual model of student success focused on CTE students in community colleges.

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Objective: Despite extensive debate about the curricular mission of community colleges, prior research has not sufficiently analyzed differences in the kinds of degrees (i.e., the field of study and award level) community colleges produce. Therefore, we explore both the fields of study and the levels at which public community colleges grant degrees and analyze how this has changed over time. Method: Multilevel latent class analysis is used here to estimate latent degree-granting profiles, and colleges are allocated into the profiles based on their observed degree-granting behaviors from 1987 to 2012.

Results: The analysis shows that public community colleges can be allocated into five distinct degree-granting profiles over the period of study. A small minority of colleges have and continue to engage almost exclusively in a vocational mission. The two degree profiles that increased in prominence over time suggest an overall shift toward the simultaneous pursuit of transfer and vocational missions. However, a majority of colleges (68 per cent) exhibited stable degree-granting behaviors between 1987 and 2012, indicating a relatively high level of stability in degree-granting patterns across community colleges during this period. Contribution: These patterns highlight variation across colleges and both stability and change within institutions over time. This suggests that public community colleges are simultaneously situated in strong institutional and technical environments and, thus, are subject to constraints and incentives that shape not only their stated policies but also their actual degree-granting behaviors.

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This essay examines the impact of the Bologna Process on the development of short-cycle higher education in Europe, noting that the integration of short-cycle qualifications within the Qualifications Framework for the European Higher Education Area, combined with the critical place allotted to those programs in national lifelong learning frameworks, has charged short-cycle programs and qualifications with a dual responsibility: to train graduates for employment as well as prepare them for future studies. The challenges faced by European countries in creating programs and qualifications that meet this dual responsibility are discussed.

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