Publications
Supporting Learning Online: Perspectives of Faculty and Staff at Broad-Access Institutions During COVID-19
This Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative report examines how faculty and staff at nine institutions reconsidered students’ online learning needs in the midst of the pandemic, and it explores how supports were offered to help students strengthen their self-directed learning skills.
Self-Directed Learning Skills: Strategies to Support Student Learning in Online STEM Courses
This Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative brief discusses some of the challenges with online teaching reported by STEM instructors, describes a self-directed learning (SDL) framework to address these challenges, and highlights support strategies that can be integrated into teaching practices.
Understanding Dual Enrollment
This fact sheet describes the growth of dual enrollment, the various models and funding mechanisms, and steps colleges and high schools can take to make dual enrollment more equitable.
Developmental Education Reform as a Civil Rights Agenda: Recent History & Future Directions for California
This paper describes research that prompted developmental education reform, explores efforts in California that led to the passing of A.B. 705, summarizes research on its implementation and outcomes, and discusses the implications of this research for improving postsecondary access and success.
Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality
This journal article analyzes how choice proliferation and information inequity in higher education join to produce and legitimate educational inequality, and it offers detailed recommendations on how to reduce this inegalitarian impact.
Challenges and Opportunity: An Examination of Barriers to Postsecondary Academic Success
This Annenberg Institute working paper examines the relationship between community college students’ academic persistence and their time utilization, engagement with campus resources, and financial and mental well-being, as well as the relative importance of these factors for students’ educational attainment.
Lessons From Two Major Evaluations of Guided Pathways
This brief discusses findings and implications from two recent large studies of guided pathways that examined the scale at which colleges have implemented reforms and the association between adopted practices and early student outcomes.
Whole-College Reforms in Community Colleges: Guided Pathways Practices and Early Academic Success in Three States
Using institutional survey and administrative data, this paper examines the association between statewide adoption of guided pathways practices by community colleges in Tennessee, Ohio, and Washington and improvements in first-year student outcomes.
Access to Success: Insights for Implementing a Multiple Measures Assessment System
This CAPR report highlights the roles of key actors and of state context and policy in the implementation of multiple measures assessment (MMA) at 12 two- and four-year colleges in Arkansas and Texas. It also discusses costs and describes challenges, such as obtaining staff buy-in, managing student data, and ensuring sufficient staffing.
How HEER Funding Rescued Community Colleges From the Pandemic
Using financial data from IPEDS, this ARCC Network brief examines what happened to community college revenue and student aid during the pandemic and assesses the importance of Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) funding for community colleges and their students.
Heterogeneity in Labor Market Returns to Master’s Degrees: Evidence from Ohio
This Annenberg Institute working paper provides up-to-date causal evidence on labor market returns to master’s degrees and examines heterogeneity in the returns by field area, student demographics, and initial labor market conditions.
An Analysis of Federal Pandemic Relief Funding at Community Colleges
This ARCC Network report examines how Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) funds were distributed to community colleges and the extent to which the colleges spent those funds. It also explores how HEER funding and spending patterns differed by institutional and student characteristics.
Tracking Transfer: Community College and Four-Year Institutional Effectiveness in Broadening Bachelor’s Degree Attainment
These two reports use student data disaggregated by race/ethnicity, neighborhood income, and age to measure the performance of two- and four-year institutions in enabling students who start college at a community college to transfer and complete bachelor’s programs. State-by-state breakdowns of transfer metrics designed for use by college and state system leaders are included in the reports and in an online data dashboard.
“Waiving” Goodbye to Placement Testing: Broadening the Benefits of Dual Enrollment Through Statewide Policy
Using interview data from program leaders and statewide student data, this paper examines the implementation and estimates the effects of Ohio’s Innovative Programs, a policy aimed at expanding access to dual enrollment for underserved high school students.
How States and Systems Can Support Practitioner Efforts to Strengthen Dual Enrollment
Informed by findings from The Dual Enrollment Playbook and site visits to Title I high schools and their community college partners in Texas and Florida, this report offers guidance for state leaders on how to support practitioner efforts to broaden the benefits of dual enrollment.
Advancing Equity With Effective Community College Transfer Pathways
This brief, published by The Campaign for College Opportunity, explores ways transfer reform can close equity gaps in bachelor’s degree attainment by providing vital degree pathways for students from minoritized backgrounds.
How Community Colleges Can Help Address Teacher Shortages
Using administrative data from CUNY, this brief explores the role that community colleges play in contributing to degrees awarded in education, and it considers how the transfer experience for students interested in pursuing careers as teachers can be improved.
How Important Are Community Colleges in Promoting STEM?
This report argues that a more inclusive definition of STEM that accounts for STEM-oriented technical training programs would better represent the contribution community colleges make to STEM education and the STEM workforce.
The Long-Term Effectiveness of Multiple Measures Assessment: Evidence From a Randomized Controlled Trial
Using nine terms of outcomes data, this CAPR working paper presents findings from an impact study on multiple measures assessment at seven State University of New York (SUNY) community colleges.
The Long-Term Effects of Multiple Measures Assessment at SUNY Community Colleges
This CAPR brief describes findings and implications of an evaluation study of multiple measures assessment (MMA); it focuses on results among students whose placements changed (or would have changed) under MMA.