Publications

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.

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.

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 ARCC Network report examines how Higher Education Emergency Relief (HEER) funds were distributed to community colleges and the extent to which the colleges spent those funds. It also explores how HEER funding and spending patterns differed by institutional and student characteristics.

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.

Informed by findings from The Dual Enrollment Playbook and site visits to Title I high schools and their community college partners in Texas and Florida, this report offers guidance for state leaders on how to support practitioner efforts to broaden the benefits of dual enrollment.

This brief, published by The Campaign for College Opportunity, explores ways transfer reform can close equity gaps in bachelor’s degree attainment by providing vital degree pathways for students from minoritized backgrounds.

Using administrative data from CUNY, this brief explores the role that community colleges play in contributing to degrees awarded in education, and it considers how the transfer experience for students interested in pursuing careers as teachers can be improved.

This report argues that a more inclusive definition of STEM that accounts for STEM-oriented technical training programs would better represent the contribution community colleges make to STEM education and the STEM workforce.

The brief, published by The Campaign for College Opportunity, summarizes the research on dual enrollment programs and offers policymakers a strategy to increase college enrollment and attainment via such efforts.

This CAPR brief describes findings and implications of an evaluation study of multiple measures assessment (MMA); it focuses on results among students whose placements changed (or would have changed) under MMA.

Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, this report presents findings from research on humanities coursetaking at Michigan community colleges conducted as part of the Strengthening Michigan Humanities project.

This report presents the dual enrollment equity pathways (DEEP) framework, which aims to expand access to dual enrollment and redesign practices so that underserved students can use it to pursue a high-value postsecondary degree program directly after high school.

This report describes dual enrollment equity pathways (DEEP) reforms implemented by six community college–K-12 partnerships in Florida and Texas, and it provides insights and guidance for other colleges and schools interested in undertaking DEEP reforms.

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.

CCRC’s 2020-2022 Biennial Report tells the story of CCRC’s impact on the field through quotes from community college leaders and statistics about our outreach efforts. It also talks about the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the research process. The report marks CCRC’s 25th anniversary, discusses other major areas of research, and provides a snapshot of the center’s finances.

Based on interview, focus group, observational, and student survey data, this CAPR brief presents findings on the design and implementation of corequisite developmental courses at four colleges, and it highlights lessons for other colleges.

Drawing on interviews as well as self-assessment and performance data, this report discusses what the AACC Pathways colleges have accomplished in their guided pathways reforms over the past seven years and what they have learned about institutional transformation.

This brief details advice from leaders—including college presidents, senior administrators, faculty, and staff֫— who were involved in planning, overseeing, or coordinating guided pathways reforms at the 30 colleges that participated in the AACC Pathways Project.

Based on institutional survey data, this report presents findings from a study on the scale of adoption of guided pathways practices at community and technical colleges in Ohio, Tennessee, and Washington State.

This report uses IPEDS data to better understand healthcare training programs and the current role that community colleges play in training healthcare workers, including public health workers.

This ARCC Network brief describes Higher Education Emergency Relief funding the federal government provided to community colleges, and it provides a first look at how much funding was awarded to and spent by the colleges through February 2023.

Based on interview data, this report examines a set of seven strategies that presidents of community colleges implementing Caring Campus are using to develop a more positive college culture and to support this culture-focused reform.

This fact sheet discusses how important Pell Grants are for community college students and describes recent and proposed changes in the Pell Grant program.

Using data from Texas, this paper describes dual enrollment course characteristics such as instructor affiliation, location, and modality and examines how these characteristics predict students’ course completion, course grades, and subsequent college enrollment.

This brief examines research on five programs—AP, IB, dual enrollment, ECHSs and P-TECHs, and high school CTE with articulated credit—and assesses their potential as large-scale on-ramps to high-quality postsecondary programs for underrepresented students.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

Based on fieldwork at six institutions, this report describes how colleges are implementing Caring Campus/Staff, a program designed to engage nonacademic staff in improving interactions with students and fostering a culture of caring at community colleges.

This brief describes the motivation, research evidence, and equity implications that underlie the Ask-Connect-Inspire-Plan framework as a useful strategy for community colleges.

Using data on students enrolled in two- and four-year colleges of the City University of New York, this essay assesses the distribution of benefits of the scholarship program in terms of who qualifies for, receives, and renews awards.

Using administrative data, this report examines early college outcomes of students placed into corequisite reading courses at the 13 community colleges in the Tennessee Board of Regents system.

Based on fieldwork at eight institutions, this report describes how community colleges are responding to workplace technology innovation by adapting their workforce programming, diversifying pathways to certificates and degrees, and addressing equity concerns.

This paper provides the first causal evidence on a system-wide corequisite reform, using data from all 13 community colleges affiliated with the Tennessee Board of Regents.