January 23, 2023

Report: Caring Campus Program Tied to Increased Connection for Students and Faculty

Diverse: Issues In Higher Education spoke with CCRC’s Elisabeth Barnett and Selena Cho about findings from their latest report on Caring Campus.

January 18, 2023

Age Matters

Federal enrollment data shows that community colleges gained dual-enrollment students but lost recent high school grads and adult learners at high rates during the first two years of the pandemic. CCRC’s John Fink spoke with Inside Higher Ed on the differences in enrollment patterns among age groups and how colleges might recoup their losses going forward. 

January 17, 2023

Researchers Hope to Boost Community College Transfer and Make It More Equitable

CCRC and The Aspen Institute team up on a new project that looks at updated data, broken up by race and ethnicity, to see who is transferring from two-year institutions and earning a bachelor’s degree.

January 12, 2023

College While in High School: How Dual Credit Is Aiming for Equity

The expansion of dual credit programs across the country has offset the steep decline in community college enrollments that the pandemic magnified. But CCRC’s John Fink tells The Christian Science Monitor it’s not clear that replacing regular students with dually enrolled ones is a sustainable strategy for the struggling sector. If colleges hope to make up for their losses, Fink says, they’ll have to convince more high school students to continue their education after they graduate.

January 06, 2023

Bachelor’s Degree Dreams of Community College Students Get Stymied by Red Tape — And It’s Getting Worse

In response to the falling rate of transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges, experts are calling out the shortcomings of the current transfer process. The Hechinger Report spoke with CCRC’s John Fink about the long road to a bachelor’s degree for today’s community college students. The story also ran in The Washington Post.

December 22, 2022

5 Ways to Pay for Community College

CCRC Senior Research Assistant Daniel Sparks spoke to U.S. News & World Report about the ways community college students can pay for their education and factors they should be aware of as they apply for funding.

December 13, 2022

Community College Update: The Best Outcome? Higher Income

Site Selection Magazine spoke with CCRC Senior Research Scholar Davis Jenkins about a collaborative project between the Aspen Institute and CCRC that aims to increase the number of community college students, especially those from historically underserved backgrounds, entering and completing programs that lead directly to family-sustaining wages and the efficient completion of a bachelor’s degree.

December 07, 2022

Aspen Institute and Community College Research Center to Create Publications Examining Transfer Student Outcomes and Best Practices

Diverse: Issues in Higher Education wrote about a collaboration between the Aspen Institute College Excellence Program and CCRC that will produce two publications in support of improving transfer student outcomes, particularly for students of color and low-income students.

December 02, 2022

A New Funding Formula

Texas is considering making the switch to outcome-based funding, rooted in metrics like retention, completion, and the successful transfer to four-year programs. CCRC's Nikki Edgecombe told Diverse: Issues in Higher Education that she hopes the change makes it through the Legislature.

November 29, 2022

A Campaign Fosters Faster Routes to Degrees

According to data from Complete College America, only 5% of full-time community college students nationwide graduate in two years; as Inside Higher Ed reports, some institutions, like Camden County College, are addressing this by implementing a "15 to Finish" campaign, which encourages students to take 15 credits per semester rather than the minimum of 12. CCRC Senior Research Scholar Davis Jenkins commented on the issue of student momentum: "Colleges are hemorrhaging these students. And they’re wasting talent. It’s an equity issue. It’s a workforce issue."