Higher education offers many benefits to individuals and society--including increased employment opportunities and higher wages--and can help disrupt cycles of intergenerational poverty by improving economic outcomes for those who earn postsecondary credentials. Public community and technical colleges offer a relatively affordable, open-access…

A widely cited Emory University study found that while 76% of incarcerated Americans return to prison within five years, that rate drops to 55% for those who take high school classes, 30% for those who complete vocational training, and 13.7% for those who complete an associate degree. Community colleges play a key role in ensuring that people…

Completing math coursework in the first year, among other milestones, points to longer term success for community or technical college (CTC) students. Despite colleges working to improve math achievement in more recent years, not all students attempt math in their first year. Practitioners of math pathways, however, suggest that when colleges work…

In the past few decades, the cost of college has risen significantly, while federal, state, and institutional financial aid and family income have remained stagnant or declined (Goldrick-Rab, 2018). As a result, many college students struggle to afford the full cost of college attendance and may experience basic needs insecurity, including the…

Approximately 450 community colleges nationally are part of formal statewide or national initiatives to implement guided pathways reforms to improve student success, and many other colleges are implementing guided pathways practices on their own. Because guided pathways is a whole-college reform--and because it takes several years to fully…

The Running Start Summer School Pilot program was established in 2020 by House Bill 2864 and enacted as Revised Code of Washington (RCW) 28A.630.600. To determine whether the summer term should be funded under the Running Start Program, a summer pilot was created to evaluate interest in and barriers to expanding the Running Start program to…

The dataset used in this report was created by combining Bridge to Finish intervention records, provided by the United Way of King County (UWKC), with student information provided by the State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC). The intervention records span the terms from summer 2018 through fall 2021. SBCTC data include these…

In this paper, we report the description and evaluation of an annual workshop titled "Capacity Building Workshops for Competitive S-STEM Proposals from Two-Year Colleges in the Western U.S." which was offered in June of 2019, 2020, and 2021 with the goal of facilitating submissions to the NSF S-STEM program from 2-year colleges (2YCs).…

While most community colleges admit all students who apply for admission, the vast majority have required students to demonstrate specified levels of literacy and numeracy before they can take college-level courses. Typically, students have been assessed using a single placement test, such as the College Board's ACCUPLACER. Colleges--or sometimes…

Yakima Valley College--a two-year, Hispanic-serving institution in south-central Washington state--partnered with four-year universities, agricultural centers, businesses, and federal and state agencies to develop a streamlined undergraduate research experience in which students work closely with a faculty mentor in a science, technology,…

"Free college" has become a catch phrase for a variety of policy proposals intended to support this national priority. Most free college proposals share important goals: to reduce costs to students and families, to increase the number of college graduates, and to help students acquire skills needed in the workforce. Free college…

The purpose of this phenomenological case study was to explore the perceived effectiveness of a restructured developmental education program at one campus of a large, multi-campus community college in North Texas. The restructuring process was guided by the mandates of Texas House Bill 2223 passed in 2017. One of the components of the bill allowed…

CCRC recently conducted two major studies to shed light on the feasibility of implementing guided pathways reforms at scale and on the association between implementation and improvements in student outcomes. The first is an evaluation of the AACC Pathways Project, which involved 30 colleges from around the country that were committed to making…

Despite evidence suggesting that standardized tests are an imperfect measure of academic readiness, many community colleges across the country rely on them alone to determine student course placement. However, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced campuses to transition to remote operations in spring 2020, proctoring in-person placement tests became…

The state of Michigan has set a goal to increase the percentage of residents with a postsecondary degree or credential to 60 percent by 2030. Achieving that goal will require a concerted, strategic, and multipronged effort. Today, less than 50 percent of residents have attained a postsecondary degree or credential. While making college more…