By Hana Lahr, Ellen Wasserman, Serena C. Klempin, and Davis Jenkins
Choosing a major is not the same as having a plan.
Many community college students enter college strongly motivated to earn a credential, secure a good job, or transfer to a four-year institution. But even students with clear goals may not know which courses to take, how long it will take to complete their program, or how their program connects to employment or a bachelor’s degree in their field. Without guidance, students can end up taking courses that do not advance their goals, accumulating excess credits, or leaving college before completing their programs.
A new CCRC research brief, From Goals to Graduation to Post-Completion Success: Why Every Student Needs an Educational Plan, examines why individualized career and educational plans are essential to student success. Along with the brief, a set of case studies explains how Tallahassee State College, Southwest Wisconsin Technical College, and Marion Technical College in Ohio have made educational planning an integral part of nearly every student’s experience. We will publish three additional case studies later this fall.
Plans Turn Goals Into Paths to Completion and Post-Completion Success
An educational plan is more than a map of courses required for a program of study. It is a personalized academic roadmap showing what courses a student will take, when they will take them, and how those courses and other learning activities will prepare them to achieve their career and further education goals.
Developing an effective plan begins with helping students explore their interests, strengths, and aspirations and learn about related careers and programs. Using program maps created by faculty, advisors then work with students to create a tailored course sequence that leads to their intended job or transfer destination, taking into account work and caregiving responsibilities, prior credits, expected course load, and timeline for completion. The resulting plan gives students a realistic view of what it will take to reach their goals and helps clarify the purpose of each course.
That clarity matters. More than 40% of students who start at a community college leave higher education before their second year. In a recent CCRC survey of students who stopped out from four community colleges, 78% reported that no one had helped them choose a program of study, and 61% had never developed an educational plan. A national survey from New America found that nearly a quarter of students who stopped out were unsure how many semesters they needed to complete their degree, compared with 4% of continuing students.
Educational plans also benefit colleges. When institutions know which programs students are pursuing and which courses they need next, they can schedule classes more strategically, identify students who are off their paths, and focus advising and support on students who need it the most. Educational planning is therefore not only an advising practice; it is a foundation for increasing retention and completion while reducing students’ costs and time to completion.
How Planning Changes the Student Experience
The three colleges profiled in the first set of case studies differ in size, setting, and organization. But all have shifted from leaving students to navigate college largely on their own to providing a structured process for choosing a program and planning a path to completion and beyond.
At Tallahassee State College, admissions navigators contact students soon after they apply and help them connect to advising, registration, and career exploration. Students attend a virtual “Supergroup” to register for their first-term courses and then meet individually with an assigned advisor to develop a full educational plan. Plans for students seeking to transfer identify students’ intended university and major, so the courses they take apply toward a bachelor’s degree in their field.
Southwest Wisconsin Technical College requires entering students to develop a Student Success Plan that connects a five-year career goal with academic, support, and financial plans. Students see not only which courses they need but also how long their program will take and how they will pay for tuition and living expenses while enrolled. Faculty later meet with students to revisit their career goals and connect them with work-based learning and professional networks.
At Marion Technical College, students explore careers and programs through a required first-year experience course. They research their chosen program—including transfer opportunities, embedded credentials, and experiential learning—and bring that work to an advising meeting where they develop a full-program plan.
Across these colleges, planning begins early, connects career exploration with program choice, and continues after the first registration appointment. Students have a visible path and a designated person who can help make adjustments if their goals or circumstances change.
Scaling Planning With Limited Staff
None of these colleges has extensive advising capacity. They achieved scale by making planning part of a broader vision for redesigning the student experience, then reorganized staff roles and business processes—and used technology to automate routine tasks and facilitate communication—to make that vision possible.
Tallahassee scaled planning through App2Cap, its larger redesign of the student experience from application through graduation. The college divides responsibilities among admissions navigators and specialized advisors, uses small-group virtual sessions for initial registration, and relies on technology and student self-service for routine tasks, including registration for subsequent semesters. This allows advisors with large caseloads to devote more time to the conversations and guidance students need most.
Southwest Wisconsin implemented Student Success Plans as part of a broader strategic effort to prepare students for post-completion success—whether by securing a living-wage job or efficiently transferring into a bachelor’s program. It turned planning into a college-wide responsibility shared by recruiters, advisors, financial aid staff, and faculty. The college standardized the process, incorporated key planning steps into admission and registration requirements, and determined how the process should work before developing the technology systems to support its implementation.
Marion Tech incorporated educational planning into a larger redesign following the guided pathways model. It sought to improve student outcomes and generate revenue through Ohio’s performance funding system by increasing course completion and credential attainment. The college strengthened field-based case-management advising, leveraging grant funding to hire more advisors and using increased performance funding revenue to make the positions permanent. In addition, the college embedded much of the preparation for planning in its first-year experience course. It also used technology to prepopulate plans, alert advisors when students change or depart from them, and make subsequent registration more efficient.
These approaches differ, but the underlying lesson is consistent: Scaling educational planning requires an overarching vision for changing the student experience, supported by redesigned roles, processes, and technology. The new brief explains why that work matters. The case studies show different approaches for scaling educational planning with limited resources.
Funding for this research was provided by Ascendium Education Group.
