Publications
What Do Dual Enrollment Students Want? Elevating the Voices of Historically Underserved Students to Guide Reforms
Based on focus group interviews with predominantly Black, Hispanic, and low-income students, this brief examines the experiences of students historically underserved in dual enrollment to understand what these students want from their programs and the educators who lead them.
Institutional and Student Responses to Free College: Evidence From Virginia
Using administrative data, this paper analyzes Get a Skill, Get a Job, Get Ahead (G3)—a free community college initiative that Virginia implemented in 2021—and shows that both institutions and students responded to the tuition-free messaging and eligibility criteria.
Classifying Community College Programs by Post-Completion Success in Transfer and Workforce
This program classification guidebook and accompanying data analysis and visualization tools from the Aspen Institute and CCRC can be useful for community colleges seeking to increase the number of students in high-value programs and decrease the number in lower value pathways.
Dual Enrollment Equity Pathways: A Research-Based Framework for Expanding College and Career Opportunity for Underserved Students
This article introduces “dual enrollment equity pathways” (DEEP)—a research-based framework for rethinking à la carte dual enrollment as a more equitable on-ramp to college programs of study that lead to high-opportunity career paths for students historically underserved in dual enrollment.
Increasing Access to High-Demand Occupational Training: An Exploration of G3’s Recruitment and Enrollment Strategies
This ARCC Network brief uses enrollment and outcome data as well as interview data from eight colleges implementing the Get A Skill, Get A Job, Get Ahead (G3) program to examine college-level G3 outreach, recruitment, and enrollment strategies and the process for awarding G3 aid.
Community Colleges and the Emerging Green Economy: A Call to Action
In this Call to Action, CCRC shares five insights from a recent symposium on the role community colleges can play in addressing climate change, with the goal of supporting work currently underway and galvanizing further efforts to prepare workers for the green economy.
Technology-Based Instructional Strategies Show Promise in Improving Self-Regulated Learning Skills at Broad-Access Postsecondary Institutions
Using clickstream data from five online courses, this article presents preliminary findings from a rapid-cycle evaluation testing the use of videos and prompts as technology-supported instructional strategies designed to improve self-regulated learning in online classrooms.
Pandemic Relief Spending and Recovery Strategies: Findings From a Survey of Community Colleges in Six States
This ARCC Network report describes pandemic recovery activities community colleges implemented with federal Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) funds, colleges’ perceptions of how successful the funds were in addressing student and institutional needs during the pandemic, and colleges’ views of unmet needs.
Understanding the Personal Support Networks of First-Generation College Students From Immigrant Backgrounds
This book chapter explores the personal support networks and help-seeking preferences of immigrant-origin, first-generation-in-college students (FGCS) as part of a three-year longitudinal mixed-methods study with FGCSs at four public Hispanic-serving institutions in California.
Supporting Learning Online: Perspectives of Faculty and Staff at Broad-Access Institutions During COVID-19
This Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative report examines how faculty and staff at nine institutions reconsidered students’ online learning needs in the midst of the pandemic, and it explores how supports were offered to help students strengthen their self-directed learning skills.
Self-Directed Learning Skills: Strategies to Support Student Learning in Online STEM Courses
This Postsecondary Teaching with Technology Collaborative brief discusses some of the challenges with online teaching reported by STEM instructors, describes a self-directed learning (SDL) framework to address these challenges, and highlights support strategies that can be integrated into teaching practices.
Understanding Dual Enrollment
This fact sheet describes the growth of dual enrollment, the various models and funding mechanisms, and steps colleges and high schools can take to make dual enrollment more equitable.
Developmental Education Reform as a Civil Rights Agenda: Recent History & Future Directions for California
This paper describes research that prompted developmental education reform, explores efforts in California that led to the passing of A.B. 705, summarizes research on its implementation and outcomes, and discusses the implications of this research for improving postsecondary access and success.
Choice, Information Inequity, and the Production, Legitimation, and Reduction of Educational Inequality
This journal article analyzes how choice proliferation and information inequity in higher education join to produce and legitimate educational inequality, and it offers detailed recommendations on how to reduce this inegalitarian impact.
Challenges and Opportunity: An Examination of Barriers to Postsecondary Academic Success
This Annenberg Institute working paper examines the relationship between community college students’ academic persistence and their time utilization, engagement with campus resources, and financial and mental well-being, as well as the relative importance of these factors for students’ educational attainment.
Lessons From Two Major Evaluations of Guided Pathways
This brief discusses findings and implications from two recent large studies of guided pathways that examined the scale at which colleges have implemented reforms and the association between adopted practices and early student outcomes.
Whole-College Reforms in Community Colleges: Guided Pathways Practices and Early Academic Success in Three States
Using institutional survey and administrative data, this paper examines the association between statewide adoption of guided pathways practices by community colleges in Tennessee, Ohio, and Washington and improvements in first-year student outcomes.
Access to Success: Insights for Implementing a Multiple Measures Assessment System
This CAPR report highlights the roles of key actors and of state context and policy in the implementation of multiple measures assessment (MMA) at 12 two- and four-year colleges in Arkansas and Texas. It also discusses costs and describes challenges, such as obtaining staff buy-in, managing student data, and ensuring sufficient staffing.
How HEER Funding Rescued Community Colleges From the Pandemic
Using financial data from IPEDS, this ARCC Network brief examines what happened to community college revenue and student aid during the pandemic and assesses the importance of Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) funding for community colleges and their students.
Heterogeneity in Labor Market Returns to Master’s Degrees: Evidence from Ohio
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.