Guidance and counseling are among the important forms of student support in community colleges. They are particularly important because of the large number of "experimenters" and "undecided" students, who know that they need some form of postsecondary education to get ahead but are not yet sure what field of occupation they want to enter. Despite the potential importance of these services, there has been relatively little research about them.

An examination of guidance and counseling was therefore incorporated into the site visits of 15 community colleges, as part of the CCRC National Field Study. The results revealed that academic counseling, to help students determine the right courses to take, overshadows career-oriented counseling. Furthermore, a great deal of counseling consists of simple information, assuming that students know how to use information wisely. In contrast, some counselors have articulated a notion of "active counseling" - "trying to answer the questions students would ask if students knew what to ask" - in place of passive counseling. In addition, colleges have developed a variety of practices that follow innovative approaches to counseling including semester-long courses, learning communities, and innovations in how counselors are assigned to students. Overall the results reveal enormous promise in community colleges rethinking their approach to guidance and counseling.

This research was led by Professor W. Norton Grubb. A chapter on this topic, "Like, What Do I Do Now?’’: The Dilemmas of Guidance Counseling, appears in the book, Defending the Community College Equity Agenda.