About Us

Housed at Teachers College, Columbia University, CCRC is the leading independent authority on the nation’s nearly 1200 two-year colleges.

CCRC strategically assesses the problems and performance of community colleges in order to contribute to the development of practice and policy that expands access to higher education and promotes success for all students.

In 1996, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation invited Thomas Bailey, director of the Institute on Education and the Economy at Teachers College, Columbia University, to submit a proposal to form a community college research center. At the time, very little was known about two-year public colleges despite the fact that they enrolled nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates.

In the years since, CCRC’s research on community colleges has served to generate and inform a renewed interest in these essential higher education institutions, and continues to make vital contributions to higher education research, policy, and practice.

CCRC leads two research centers funded by grants from the U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

The National Center for Postsecondary Research evaluates programs designed to improve the transition to and progression through college by underprepared students and is comprised of researchers from CCRC, MDRC, the University of Virginia, and Harvard University.

The Center for Analysis of Postsecondary Education and Employment investigates the labor market outcomes of postsecondary pathways and is comprised of researchers from CCRC, University of Michigan, Harvard, Stanford, University of North Carolina, and New Horizons Economic Research.