Publications

This report and the five case studies that accompany it describe how institutions are managing the broad-based transformation of programs, student services, and related support systems using the guided pathways model.

This report shares the stories of four community colleges that participated in the Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) initiative, which provided support for institutions as they redesigned their advising processes and adopted and implemented new technologies.

This study examines if students participating in Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) developmental courses enroll in and pass college-level math courses at higher rates than students who take traditional developmental math courses.

This study, conducted in partnership with MDRC, examines the effects of three institutions’ efforts to expand the use of advising technologies and to use administrative and communication strategies to increase student contact with advisors.

In this brief, the authors examine how well nine measures of students’ progress in their first year predict student completion in subsequent years, and thus how suitable these early momentum metrics are as leading indicators of the effectiveness of institutional reforms.

This paper explores how technology is integrated into developmental education programming and considerations for institutional leaders when deciding whether and how to integrate technology in developmental education.

Using transcript-level data from two community college state systems and a nationally representative survey, this short report examines how course-taking in humanities and liberal arts at community colleges affects transfer and outcomes at four-year colleges.

This short report provides a systematic accounting of the provision of humanities and liberal arts education at public colleges in the United States, including community colleges.

This paper describes key features of CUNY Start mathematics and how it differs from traditional developmental education.

This brief examines the expansion and adaptation of the City University of New York’s Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), using Bronx Community College as an illustrative case study.

This paper examines factors within the community college context that affect the experiences and academic outcomes of the English learner population broadly and students who enroll in ESL courses in particular.

In 2012, Quad Learning partnered with two community colleges to pilot American Honors, a program designed to help academically talented community college students overcome the challenges of transferring to more selective four-year destinations. This paper traces the components of the program's socially conscious theory of change, its for-profit business model, and the tensions between the two.

In this piece for the Teachers College Record, CCRC Director Thomas Brock describes how mixed methods may be used in education research and offers advice to researchers who are seeking funding from IES for mixed methods studies.

Using Florida as a case study, this Change Magazine article describes the complexities of implementing effective college readiness reforms and offers insights for policymakers looking to improve student success.

This paper describes how community colleges became a major resource for the nation's workforce development requirements and discusses how this role continues to evolve to meet the needs of students, employers, and local communities.

This working paper describes the idea of demography as opportunity, which marries the racial and ethnic shifts underway in the country and in higher education with equity perspectives on historically disenfranchised populations.

Written in conjunction with the Education Commission of the States, this brief provides an overview of multiple measures assessment and placement and describes how several states are implementing the approach.

This paper illustrates student responses to Satisfactory Academic Progress (SAP) requirements as well as the tradeoffs faced by a social planner weighing whether to set performance standards in the context of need-based aid.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this paper compares the academic and labor market outcomes of high school graduates who delay college enrollment and those who enroll in college immediately up to 13 years after high school completion.

Based on interviews with stakeholders in 11 states and other data, this brief describes the design, implementation, and effectiveness of math transition courses and identifies major trends in course development.