By Serena C. Klempin, Davis Jenkins, and Hana Lahr
Without intending to do so, the field of higher education has lapsed into a “better late than never” mindset when it comes to community college completion. Major investments in increasing community college completion rates starting in the early 2000s initially represented a pivotal shift from an earlier emphasis on broadening college access. Yet, a narrow focus on completion makes it all too easy to overlook a critical question: How long is it taking students to complete? The third pillar of guided pathways highlights the importance of keeping students on a path to completion. But keeping students on path by taking the right courses isn’t enough. It is also vital that students stay on schedule to complete. Staying on schedule does not mean pushing students to attend full time—it means ensuring that students are able to follow a schedule that works for them and allows them to complete in a reasonable timeframe based on their circumstances.
Most associate degrees are designed to be completed in two years, but only a small fraction of students complete in that timeframe. The longer students are enrolled, the less likely they are to complete at all, and the more the costs of attending college accumulate through additional college fees, reduced financial aid, lost wages, and increased debt. These consequences are most severe for the students who are the least equipped to recover from them—underserved students with limited time and resources.
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The factors impacting how long it takes community college students to complete are multifaceted. One major factor is enrollment intensity. Enrolling part-time means that it will take longer to complete a credential than enrolling full-time. After six years, the difference in the completion rate between full-time and part-time students was 46 percentage points for the fall 2016 first-time-in-college cohort. By 2022, 66% of exclusively full-time students had completed compared with 20% of exclusively part-time students.
Part-time students likely face more barriers and have fewer resources to attend college, but that alone cannot explain the large difference in completion rates. We believe another reason is that supports to increase completion at community colleges tend to be designed for full-time students, who make up only about a third of community college students nationally. In general, colleges do little to help part-time students complete in a reasonable time at an affordable cost.
Simply encouraging full-time enrollment is unlikely to increase completion rates. The majority of community college students are working, and more than one in five has children. Given this reality, there is a pressing need to reevaluate what colleges can do so that all students—and especially students enrolled part-time—can complete on schedule and affordably.
It is reasonable to expect colleges to ensure that every student is able to create and follow a full-program plan that clearly lays out a customized timeline to completion. If a student can only attend part-time, a college can create, for example, a three-year plan for that student by offering courses the student needs in the summer. The important thing is not whether the student is enrolled full-time or part-time, but whether the student has a plan with a timeline that makes it feasible for them to complete on schedule.
The guided pathways Ask-Connect-Inspire-Plan (ACIP) framework for new student onboarding illustrates the essential role that educational plans play in helping students get on a path. Those plans can provide a roadmap for monitoring students’ progress to ensure they stay on path and on schedule to completion.
Building on the Plan practice of ACIP, we have identified three strategies that we believe can make on-schedule completion attainable for more students: mandatory case management advising by field that includes ongoing progress monitoring, student-centered scheduling, and efforts to promote financial stability.
Mandatory case management advising by field with ongoing progress monitoring. Embedding advisors within meta-majors or groups of majors and assigning them to students in a specific program provides a strong foundation for keeping students on path and on schedule:
Assigning advisors by field allows them to become specialists in curricular requirements, transfer options, and employment opportunities related to their programs.
Advisors assigned by field are also able to work closely with faculty members for their programs, improving communication between student services and academic departments to address concerns about students proactively.
Requiring meetings with an assigned advisor at regular checkpoints throughout students’ time in college creates a routine process for monitoring progress, reviewing students’ plans, and updating them as necessary.
Student-centered scheduling. Conventional Monday through Thursday, 9 a.m.–2 p.m. college schedules are designed for students entering college directly after high school, not for the majority of community college students today. To provide students some flexibility, colleges typically default to online courses. But we don’t know that students would prefer online classes if they were given more in-person, hybrid, or other flexible alternatives. The goal of student-centered scheduling is to ensure students can take the classes they need when they need them in the modality they prefer to avoid delaying completion. Student-centered scheduling starts with using students’ educational plans to forecast course demand and build schedules that ensure the classes students need are available. Additional strategies include building schedules that are:
Concentrated: Concentrated schedules (e.g., condensed 7- or 8-week terms, block schedules, summer and “mini-mester” offerings) help students take more of the courses on their plans in a given year.
Flexible: Flexible course schedules provide busy working students with more options in terms of the days and times that classes are available (including evenings, weekends, and summers) and the modalities in which they are offered (including online, hybrid, and hyflex options).
Efforts to promote financial stability. Basic needs insecurity among community college students is widespread, and financial stress is one of the main reasons students decide to leave college. Lowering the cost of college and connecting students to supports for managing costs outside of college may ease financial pressures while also freeing up students’ time, increasing the likelihood they will be able to complete on schedule.
Policies for free tuition and free textbooks, combined with assistance in accessing public benefits and food and housing services, may increase the amount of financial resources available to students and reduce the number of hours students need to work.
Support for childcare and transportation may directly increase the amount of time students have available for college.
Helping students develop financial plans can help students see that on-schedule completion is possible and reduce the chances of financial problems derailing their plans.
Ultimately, increasing the number of students who are on a schedule that is feasible for them given their many other commitments and who are able to complete in as little time and at as little cost as possible will likely require adopting aspects of all three core strategies presented here.
While we believe it is important to address all three strategies, we also recognize there is much we don’t know about how to effectively design and deliver these supports. We need to learn more from current and former students about barriers created by college scheduling practices, their own scheduling needs and preferences, and what types of scheduling changes would enable them to make progress toward completion most efficiently. In addition, given that community colleges have limited financial resources, we need to learn more from students about which supports that promote financial stability may have the greatest impact on their ability to be successful in college. Answering these questions is more crucial now than ever. Students can’t wait any longer for timely, affordable paths to college credentials and living-wage careers.
Funding for this book was provided by Ascendium Education Group.
