As more community colleges focus on using data to improve educational outcomes, many administrators are considering business intelligence applications that promise a path toward more informed decisions. Getting there, leaders say, requires more than installing some out-of-the-box solution; it requires changing the culture and finding skilled…

Using data to track and manage student enrollment is steadily becoming a standard practice on both two-year and four-year campuses. Data mining enables colleges to create predictive models for identifying behaviors that put students at risk for dropping out, flag students who engage in these behaviors, and help identify practices that work in…

State actions to increase college completion are growing, with 23 states (though not California) signed on to Complete College America, and other foundation-led initiatives involving still more states and college systems. These initiatives are helping states use data to understand how students, and which students, make, or fail to make, progress…

During the last few years, the development of seamless education systems to promote students' postsecondary success has been discussed by policymakers at the local, state and federal levels as well as reform-minded individuals. Florida, Washington, Iowa, Georgia and California either have statewide integrated systems or are moving quickly toward…

The Achieving the Dream (ATD) initiative works with more than 100 community colleges across the United States with the specific goal of increasing student success. Together, Achieving the Dream colleges graduate or transfer close to 250,000 students a year. With just a 5 percent increase in graduation rates, individuals can positively impact the…