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This study explored the relationship between different types of interpersonal interaction, characterized by their underlying motivations, and educational outcomes among students in manufacturing programs at two-year colleges. While there exist several ways to classify interaction, motivation as an inherent attribute that fuels behaviors has been largely neglected. In this study, [the authors] developed a nuanced approach to differentiating types of interaction based on students' underlying motivation and further investigated how different forms of interaction are related to educational outcomes.

[The authors] analyzed the Community College Survey of Student Engagement data and administrative records of 242 students entering manufacturing programs during 2011-2012 at four public two-year technical colleges in Wisconsin. The outcome variables were students' cumulative grade point average (GPA) and their retention/graduation status as of spring 2013. A multiple regression model and a logistic regression model were separately estimated. [The authors] found that interaction can be grouped into three categories that represent different underlying motivations: interaction as a response to curricular demands, interaction for broader educational purposes, and interaction for diverse experiences. Interaction for broader educational purposes was positively associated with GPA, but interaction as a response to curricular demands had a negative relationship with GPA. Diversity-related interaction moderated the relationship between college under-preparedness and retention/graduation status.

This study provides an in-depth examination of interpersonal interaction that is based in the context of students' underlying motivations. [The] findings shed fresh and nuanced light on the relationship between motivation-driven interactions and college outcomes, and inform two-year college administrators and instructors as they strive to provide an enriching learning environment where students interact with faculty and peers to not only navigate course requirements but also engage in activities contributing to their broader educational and career goals.

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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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Increasingly hostile and turbulent environments have rendered top-down, problem-focused management structures inadequate for competing in the ever-changing postsecondary knowledge industry. The community college abundance model (CCAM), a strengths-based approach to performance enhancement in community colleges, is presented as a viable alternative. The CCAM draws on positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship, and positive organizational behavior.

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While new community colleges proliferated across the nation during the 1950s and 1960s, Indiana's postsecondary educational leaders pursued an alternative route to expanding educational opportunity during the postwar years through extension campuses. The study reported in this article draws on archival documents to gain an understanding of the rationale and motivations for opposing community college development in Indiana during the 1950s and the 1960s. Two research questions guided this analysis. First, how did state and educational leaders frame the issues, problems, and alternatives related to the expansion of post-high school educational opportunities? Second, why did policy actors in Indiana choose strategies different from those selected by most other states?

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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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This study examines the relationship between community college enrollment patterns and student outcomes - credential completion and transfer to a four-year institution - introducing a new way of visualizing the various attendance patterns of community college students. Patterns of enrollment intensity (full- or part-time status) and continuity (enrolling in consecutive terms or skipping one or more terms) are graphed and then clustered according to their salient features. Using data on cohorts of first-time community college students at five colleges in a single state, the study finds astounding variation in student enrollment patterns. Clustering these patterns reveals two relationships: the first is a positive association between enrollment continuity and earning a community college credential, and the second is a positive association between enrollment intensity and likelihood of transfer.

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Increasing degree completion in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, particularly engineering, is a national priority. With an aspiration to increase the number of STEM graduates by one million in the next 10 years, more research is needed to understand the role of community colleges in achieving this national goal. This qualitative study examined the motivations and learning experiences of adult learners who transferred from a community college to pursue an engineering degree at a four-year university. Using Knowles, Holton, and Swanson's theory for adult learning, or andragogy, [the authors] interviewed 18 adult students who transferred from a community college to engineering programs at a four-year research institution. Each participant was interviewed twice using a one-on-one, semi-structured format.

[The authors] found students were motivated to pursue engineering programs because of the perceived prestige associated with becoming an engineer and because of their personal curiosity in solving problems and understanding how things work. The participants further demonstrated their motivation for learning through their high post-baccalaureate aspirations, which included pursuing graduate school. To achieve academic and vocational success, students strategically developed peer relationships and selectively participated in engagement opportunities with the greatest professional or academic benefits. Recommendations for campus policies and practices include restructuring campus involvement opportunities to allow adult learners to access information through self-paced activities. Furthermore, [the] findings suggest institutions should communicate the academic and professional benefits of campus involvement and consider strategies to facilitate interactions between older adult students and their younger peers.

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Objective: Community colleges have historically reported high levels of student mental health needs, with low levels of available face to face services. Ways of meeting this mental health staffing challenge is an area of import for each institution. The [Coronavirus Disease 2019] COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated this situation. The objective of this analysis is to examine the impact of the pandemic on college students, with particular attention to community college student mental health issues and to illuminate a possible strategy to respond the expanded staffing needs faced by this sector of higher education. Method: This work is based on a review of studies reporting the pandemic's impact on community college student mental health, and needed mental health staffing. Two case studies, one urban and one rural, are presented here to highlight needed community college-university partnerships focused on increasing mental health professionals for community colleges.

Results: The case studies illuminated commonalities between urban-rural settings, as well as challenges. Based on the literature review and case studies a generic model for responding to this critical mental health staffing need is presented. Contributions: This work challenges the notion that traditional staffing arrangements are the only patterns available to expand needed mental health professionals needed in community colleges. Studies of alternative staffing arrangement, evaluation, impact, and student satisfaction are warranted.

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This article examines measures of student success, with a focus on how they apply to community colleges. A conceptual framework is presented as a way of facilitating thinking about and accurately grounding discussions of student success. The article closes with an examination of emerging concepts related to the measurement of student success in higher education generally and at community colleges particularly.

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