Publications

This paper examines how the process of making higher education choices in the U.S.—whether to enter higher education, attend a particular college, or follow a particular path through college—produces and legitimates social inequality.

This report describes the diversity and complexity of community college state finance systems, and how to identify the often competing incentives within them, by comparing the systems of three very different states: California, Ohio, and Texas.

This report describes the rationale, goals, and activities of the Strengthening Michigan Humanities project, and it provides statewide statistics and trends on community college enrollment, transfer, and bachelor’s degree completion in humanities fields.

Using administrative data from the City University of New York (CUNY), this paper examines the impact of the summer Pell program on community college student persistence, completion, and employment outcomes. 

Using an innovative text mining technique on transcript data from a large public college system, this paper examines patterns and post-degree labor market outcomes of taking work-based courses at two-year and four-year colleges in that system. 

Using three case studies, this paper examines the conditions under which dual enrollment programming could be made sustainable through efficiency gains, even for colleges that charge discounted tuition (or none at all).

This report shares results of research undertaken to understand what five iPASS institutions were doing before and during the iPASS grant period to advise and support Black, Latinx, and low-income students both in and outside the classroom.

Caring Campus/Faculty is a program aimed at increasing students’ connection to college; this report shares findings from a study on how it is being adopted at several colleges, including insights into effective faculty engagement and implementation.

Using a regression discontinuity approach and data from two cohorts of students in one state, this paper examines the effect of taking dual enrollment credits on the number of in-state public colleges students apply and are admitted to and the selectivity of those colleges.

Using employer-employee-student matched administrative data from Ohio, this paper provides the first direct evidence of workers' enrollment responses following mass layoffs in the United States.

In a review of impact and implementation studies from the past ten years, this CAPR report summarizes what is known about how innovations to developmental education can improve student outcomes, and it draws out five principles that are key for reform.

This report and accompanying case studies describe how three small colleges have made large-scale changes in practice based on the guided pathways model and how they funded and are sustaining these changes to improve rates of student progression and completion.

Using nine years of data from one state, this paper tracks completion and transfer outcomes to examine when gaps between Black, Hispanic, and White community college students occur, and it estimates the benefits of reaching early academic milestones for such students.

This CAPR brief provides guidance to institutions seeking to design and implement placement systems that redress limitations of test-only systems and that work in conjunction with other reforms to generate more equitable outcomes.

This Annenberg Institute working paper provides up-to-date causal evidence on labor market returns to master’s degrees and examines heterogeneity in the returns by field area, student demographics, and initial labor market conditions.

This fact sheet describes how community colleges hold potential for diversifying the STEM workforce as well as the challenges that community college students face in completing STEM programs.

This journal article examines how students at six community colleges identified and weighed possible transfer destination colleges, and how dedicated and personalized advisement shaped students’ transfer plans and contributed to their transfer outcomes.

This paper presents a methodology for assessing the scale of adoption and estimating the causal effects of guided pathways within states and across colleges that have adopted the approach.

Using data from the Education Longitudinal Study and a propensity score matching approach, this paper compares outcomes of four-year college students who earned either 1–10 credits or no credits at a community college.

This CAPR brief provides a taxonomy of various informed self-placement (ISP) systems, shares descriptive data from three colleges using ISP, and identifies important equity and access considerations for implementation.