Publications
How Can We Improve Teaching in Higher Education? Learning From CUNY Start
This paper describes the professional development model used in CUNY Start, a program developed at the City University of New York to support entering students identified as academically underprepared in literacy and mathematics.
Exploring the State of the Humanities in Community Colleges
This paper discusses what is known about humanities coursework in community colleges, outlines key challenges facing humanities education in this sector, and considers approaches to addressing these challenges.
Redesigning Community College Student Onboarding Through Guided Pathways
This practitioner packet provides guidance to colleges seeking to redesign their new student onboarding practices to better help students explore, choose, and plan a program of study best suited to their interests and aspirations.
A Broken “Promise”? How College Promise Programs Can Impact High-Achieving, Middle-Income Students
This report builds off previous research on American Honors to look at the unintended consequences of college promise programs for the economic mobility of high-achieving, low-income students.
Should Colleges Invest in Machine Learning? Comparing the Predictive Powers of Early Momentum Metrics and Machine Learning for Community College Credential Completion
This study compares the out-of-sample predictive power of early momentum metrics—13 near-term success measures suggested by the literature—with that of metrics from machine-learning-based models that employ approximately 500 predictors for community college credential completion.
Comparing and Learning From English and American Higher Education Access and Completion Policies
This journal article explores similarities and dissimilarities of higher education policies in England and the United States with an eye to what each country can learn from the other regarding the reduction of social class and racial/ethnic differences in higher education access and success.
A Top-Down/Bottom-Up Approach to Statewide Change: Mathematics Pathways to Completion
This report examines the efforts of six state higher education systems to improve student outcomes and close opportunity gaps in mathematics as part of a three-year project led by the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin.
Public-Private Partnership: How and Why Six Community Colleges Loved and Left a For-Profit Partner
In this Innovative Higher Education article, the authors examine the development and dissolution of a partnership between a privately held firm and six community colleges, which had established honors programs with the goal of facilitating students' transfer to selective institutions.
A Complex Ecosystem: A Qualitative Investigation Into Dynamics Affecting the Implementation of College Advising Redesigns
This paper explores the dynamics in and around an institution that influence how advisors and students experience technology-mediated advising reforms, along with the opportunities and challenges these dynamics create for colleges.
A Framework for Advising Reform
This book chapter describes key principles of CCRC's evidence-based framework for advising redesign, which emphasizes a sustained, strategic, integrated, proactive, and personalized (SSIPP) approach to advising.
Trends in Key Performance Indicators Among Colleges Participating in a Technology-Mediated Advising Reform Initiative
This report describes trends in key performance indicators among the 26 two- and four-year institutions that participated in the Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) grant initiative from 2011 to 2017.
Early Academic Outcomes for Students of Part-Time Faculty at Community Colleges: How and Why Does Instructors' Employment Status Influence Student Success?
Drawing on data from six community colleges, this paper estimates the effects of part-time faculty versus full-time faculty on students’ current and subsequent course outcomes in developmental and gateway courses and explores potential explanations for these effects.
Expanding Access to College-Level Courses
This study uses a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of multiple measures assessment programs at five colleges in Minnesota and Wisconsin and also examines the implementation and cost of the programs.
Performance-Based Funding for Higher Education: How Well Does Neoliberal Theory Capture Neoliberal Practice?
This article discusses the origins, implementation, and impacts of neoliberal policies by examining the case of performance-based funding for higher education in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. It provides recommendations for how to improve performance funding and how to construct policy models that go behind the narrow imaginings of neoliberal theory.
Gaining Ground: Findings From the Dana Center Mathematics Pathways Impact Study
This CAPR report examines how four Texas community colleges implemented Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) and the impact of DCMP on student outcomes over as many as four semesters. Costs of the initiative and student perspectives are also discussed.
The Labor Market Returns to For-Profit Higher Education: Evidence for Transfer Students
This paper examines the labor market gains for students who enrolled at for-profit colleges after beginning their postsecondary education in community college.
The Changing Landscape of Developmental Education Practices: Findings From a National Survey and Interviews with Postsecondary Institutions
This CAPR report documents developmental education practices used in broad-access two- and four-year colleges across the country based on a 2016 survey of public two- and four-year colleges and private, nonprofit four-year colleges as well as interviews with institutional and state leaders.
The Wiley Handbook of Adult Literacy
This handbook presents a wide range of research on adults who have low literacy skills. It looks at the cognitive, affective, and motivational factors underlying adult literacy; adult literacy in different countries; and the educational approaches being taken to help improve adults’ literacy skills.
The Role of Librarians in Guided Pathways Reforms
In this short essay, Shanna Jaggars (coauthor of Redesigning America's Community Colleges) and Amanda Folk (head of teaching and learning at the Ohio State Libraries) discuss how librarians' expertise could be harnessed to support guided pathways reforms.
Creating Accelerated Pathways for Student Success in Mathematics: A Snapshot of Courses Offered at the Launch of the Mathematics Pathways to Completion Project
This research brief describes findings from a survey about mathematics course offerings at institutions in six states implementing mathematics pathways.