John Fink

Senior Research Associate and Program Lead

John Fink is a senior research associate and program lead at the Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, where he leads CCRC’s research on dual enrollment and transfer. His work examines how community colleges and their K-12 and university partners are transforming student transitions from high school to college and career opportunity by extending guided pathways reforms to dual enrollment, strengthening transfer partnerships, and improving post-completion outcomes for community college students.

Fink leads a 12-person team of researchers and has raised over eight million dollars in external research funding since 2021 to conduct applied research and produce resources to support educators, policymakers, and intermediaries working to strengthen student transitions into and through community college. In 2025, Fink co-authored the book, More Essential Than Ever (Harvard Education Press), synthesizing a decade of research on guided pathways. He has led the development of the DEEP framework for strengthening dual enrollment as an on-ramp to college and career opportunity and has authored numerous CCRC publications, including those detailing national and state-by-state outcomes for transfer students and dual enrollment students, “Playbooks” on improving transfer and dual enrollment, and data dashboards including those examining community college program enrollments, completions, and access to dual enrollment coursework.

Fink’s research has been featured in The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Marketplace, Education Week, Chronicle of Higher Education, and Inside Higher Ed, and he is published in the American Educational Research Journal, Community College Review, Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, Journal of Higher Education, and Research in Higher Education.

Fink serves as research commission chair and board member of the National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships (NACEP), a member of the Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence Selection Committee, a member of the Commission on Purposeful Pathways, and a member of the Beyond Transfer Policy Advisory Board. In 2019 he received the Transfer Champion-Catalyst Award from the National Institute for the Study of Transfer Students (NISTS).

 

March 2024

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.
February 2024

Tracking Transfer: Community College and Four-Year Institutional Effectiveness in Broadening Bachelor’s Degree Attainment
These two reports use student data disaggregated by race/ethnicity, neighborhood income, and age to measure the performance of two- and four-year institutions in enabling students who start college at a community college to transfer and complete bachelor’s programs. State-by-state breakdowns of transfer metrics designed for use by college and state system leaders are included in the reports and in an online data dashboard.
October 2023

Toward a Practical Set of STEM Transfer Program Momentum Metrics
Drawing on administrative records from transfer-intending community college starters across three states, this paper develops a set of early STEM momentum metrics that are useful indicators of subsequent STEM transfer and bachelor’s degree attainment.
June 2020

Unpacking Program Enrollments and Completions With Equity in Mind
This guide presents a set of example data analyses colleges can replicate to examine whether underserved groups of students are equitably represented in programs that lead to higher opportunity outcomes for employment and/or baccalaureate transfer.
April 2018

What We Are Learning About Guided Pathways
This practitioner packet describes the guided pathways reform model; presents case studies of how colleges are approaching key pathways practices, with promising evidence on student success from early adopters; and outlines steps and a timeline for implementing guided pathways reforms.
February 2018

Are Community College Transfer Students “A Good Bet” for 4-Year Admissions? Comparing Academic and Labor-Market Outcomes Between Transfer and Native 4-Year College Students
Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this journal article examines whether community college “vertical transfer” students who resemble “native four-year” students in their accumulated college-level credits and performance at their point of entry into the four-year sector perform equally well in terms of both academic and labor market outcomes.
September 2017

Building Blocks: Laying the Groundwork for Guided Pathways Reform in Ohio
This report describes how Ohio’s two-year colleges are approaching guided pathways reforms, focusing on innovations they have implemented in recent years that can serve as building blocks as they seek to transform their policies, practices, and culture following the guided pathways model.
June 2017

What Do Students Think of Guided Pathways?
Using interview data from first-year students at City Colleges of Chicago (CCC), this brief describes students’ reactions to important components of CCC’s recent guided pathways reform efforts.
January 2015

What We Know About Transfer
This research overview reviews findings on transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges, including student outcomes, barriers to transfer, the economic benefits of transfer, and potential benefits to four-year colleges.
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Recent Presentations by John Fink

Recent Publications

Recent Presentations