California is projected to fall 1.1 million bachelor's degrees short of economic demand by 2030. Expanding access to higher education could help shrink the gap, but California also needs to boost the likelihood that students who enroll in college will stay on track to earn degrees. The share of adults with bachelor's degrees is slightly larger in…

This study examines the impact of a "natural experiment" that gave students the choice to place into or out of developmental math because of an unintended mistake made by a community college. During self-placement, more students chose to enroll in gateway college- and transfer-level math courses, however, greater proportions of female,…

Faced with shrinking state funds, rising student demand, high failure rates, and racial and ethnic achievement gaps, the introductory microeconomics course became a bottleneck for business students at California State University, Northridge. The Economics Department responded with the creation of a flipped, introductory microeconomics course where…

Recent efforts to improve developmental education have included references to learning communities as examples of effective practices in basic skills education. The study "Basic skills as a foundation for student success in California community colleges" (2007) cited research from Tinto that suggested that learning communities and…

This study examined the influence of campus-based and online-based community college developmental English courses on two student success factors: course persistence and course success. Retrospective data on all first year California community college students enrolled in developmental English courses between 2008 and 2011 were analyzed for…

An important goal for California is that public high schools continue to make progress in closing the achievement gap between demographic groups and that students are prepared for postsecondary education. In early 2008 Commission staff started developing a composite measure of academic preparation based on standardized test scores in nine college…