Publications

This paper released by the Centre for Global Higher Education at the University of London examines how the process of making higher education choices in the United States—whether to enter higher education, attend a particular college, or follow a particular route—reproduces and legitimates social inequality.

Using student transcript records and detailed college instructor employment information from one state, this CAPSEE working paper examines whether adjunct faculty have different impacts on student academic outcomes than tenure-track and tenured faculty.

In this article for Change: The Magazine for Higher Learning, CCRC Founding Director and Teachers College President Thomas Bailey outlines the tradeoff between degrees and short-term credentials offered to community college students and describes how the colleges themselves may be able to help resolve this conflict.

This chapter discusses the importance of scrutinizing the outcomes of developmental education reforms across race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, and level of developmental need.

In this article, the authors posit that a reframing of academic preparedness is warranted, and they outline three potential strategies for addressing academic underpreparedness beyond the structural and curricular reforms to developmental education taking place in many colleges.

This chapter in Higher Education: Handbook of Theory and Research reviews the structure and effectiveness of traditional developmental education and provides a history of first-, second-, and third-wave reforms and research on those approaches.

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.

In CCRC's 2018 newsletter, Thomas Bailey discusses issues colleges should attend to as they implement guided pathways in order to ensure that these reforms help close equity gaps.

This paper assesses the degree to which community college websites present challenges for students looking for information on how to transfer to a four-year institution.

This paper describes how degree-seeking students at the City Colleges of Chicago make choices about their programs in their first year of enrollment, focusing especially on how they interact with advisors and how they use college-based resources in program selection and program planning.

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.

This ECS/CAPR brief discusses the importance of and challenges surrounding developmental education and suggests ways in which policymakers can address these challenges.

This CCRC working paper uses data-mining techniques to analyze student transcripts from two states and identify variables associated with excess credits among bachelor’s degree completers who started at a community college.

In this Brookings report, the author analyzes new data on student debt and repayment released by the U.S. Department of Education in October 2017. The author then provides five key findings based on this analysis.

This brief describes the availability of transition courses across the country and offers insights into curricular design and goals, subject-area focus, how students are selected to participate, and whether completion of transition curricula guarantees placement into college-level courses.

This guide aims to help state entities organize workshops for two- and four-year institutions to improve transfer and graduation outcomes for their students through data analysis and self-reflection of institutional practices and the development of action plans.

This paper examines the impact of one transition course model, the At Home in College program, offered to selected high school students in New York City by the City University of New York (CUNY).

This article examines a study on the effectiveness of remediation for community college students who are identified as having the lowest skills in math using transcript data from a state community college system.

This guide provides instructions for community colleges that want to use National Student Clearinghouse data to assess their own effectiveness and that of particular transfer partnerships in helping students to transfer and complete bachelor’s degrees.

This paper discusses the organization, roles, and contributions of community colleges, and it analyzes reforms that have been proposed and enacted to meet ongoing challenges.