CCRC in the News

The economic fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic may wreak havoc on the City University of New York (CUNY) and force the system to lay off a substantial number of employees. In this article from The Nation, CCRC Director Thomas Brock explains why keeping institutions like CUNY strong is so important for underserved students.

As the COVID-19 pandemic disrupts their education plans, students are considering community colleges as an alternative to going away to school. In this story from NBC and The Hechinger Report, CCRC Senior Research Scholar Davis Jenkins explains what community colleges should do to retain those students and avoid a potential enrollment dip.

Community college students who aspire to transfer to four-year colleges often struggle to bring their credits with them, and the displacement caused by COVID-19 threatens to exacerbate the issue. In this Diverse: Issues in Higher Education story, CCRC Senior Research Scholar Davis Jenkins describes the challenges students face when two- and four-year institutions aren't on the same page and highlights collaborative efforts that buck the trend.

CCRC Research Associate Andrea Lopez spoke to Uptown Radio for this story about the specific challenges first-generation college students face as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Here, Community College Daily describes CCRC's latest blog posts on the center's new definition for "community college" and the potential effects of COVID-19 on student enrollment. 

The transition away from in-class instruction poses particular challenges for developmental education students and instructors who may lack reliable internet access and have to juggle jobs as essential workers with their courses. This Chronicle of Higher Education story, which draws on CCRC research for context, details those hurdles and explains how some are finding ways to overcome them.

In this CNBC story about how Covid-19 may affect community college enrollment, CCRC Director Thomas Brock explains the types of classes students who intend to transfer to a four-year college can take while they're at a two-year institution.

This article in The 74 describes CCRC Research Affiliate Shanna Smith Jaggars' new paper on the unintended consequences of diverting students who could succeed at the four-year level to community colleges. The report builds off work Jaggars did with CCRC Research Associate Maggie Fay and Negar Farakish on the American Honors program.

This Diverse: Issues in Higher Education story describes initiatives like CUNY Start and Tennessee Reconnect, which aim to increase retention by more deliberately engaging community college students. In the story, CCRC Senior Research Scholar Davis Jenkins explains why it's so important for campuses to give students "light-the-fire learning experience[s]." 

CCRC research indicates dual enrollment programs are growing across the country, but they may not be helping students from all backgrounds get a leg up. In this Diverse: Issues in Higher Education story, CCRC Senior Research Associate John Fink describes the demographic disparities in dual enrollment participation and explains why that variation is an issue.