Publications

This policy fact sheet discusses revenue streams for community colleges, disparity in resources relative to public four-year colleges, and federal spending, including COVID-19 relief funding.

Based on interviews with educators who are rethinking and revising secondary math coursework, this report describes the role of higher education in influencing high school math reform nationally and in three particular states.

This article describes how lesson study—a structured, collaborative professional development intervention—encouraged developmental mathematics faculty at three community colleges to implement new approaches to instruction.

This CAPR brief describes two recent experimental studies of multiple measures assessment, in which colleges use measures beyond placement test scores to determine students’ college readiness.

This essay discusses how students and community colleges responded to the pandemic and what their experiences reveal about inequities in higher education.

This report describes findings from a random assignment study examining the implementation, cost, and efficacy of multiple measures assessments for placing students into college-level or developmental courses.

Drawing on findings from a study of postsecondary college transcript and degree records, this brief describes metrics that may be useful in assessing efforts to improve STEM transfer outcomes.

Based on fieldwork at four guided pathways colleges, this report introduces a cross-sector pathways model and highlights emerging practices and strategies that community colleges are using to build stronger connections with employers, universities, and K-12 schools.

This brief describes results from a nationally representative survey of American workers aged 24–64 to learn what training providers they have used and what their experiences have been with these providers.

This report describes a project undertaken by CCRC, Education Northwest, and three Oregon community colleges to adapt lesson study for use among faculty teaching a precollege (developmental) quantitative literacy course.

This report describes how CCRC’s thinking about guided pathways has evolved since the publication of Redesigning America’s Community Colleges in 2015.

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.

This article argues that by tying instructional improvement efforts to ongoing reforms, colleges may be able to take advantage of structures and mechanisms employed by the reform to make teaching an institutional priority.

This fact sheet describes the importance of academic and nonacademic services, particularly for underserved students, and how students that receive targeted, intensive support experience improved outcomes.

This fact sheet outlines challenges in supporting successful student transfer from community colleges to four-year institutions and considerations for improving the transfer process.

This fact sheet describes how traditional developmental education may have unintended consequences for students and the growing body of research evidence on promising reforms.

This fact sheet outlines how the Federal Work-Study program works, its effects on academic and labor market outcomes, and why so few community college students receive Federal Work-Study aid.

This fact sheet discusses the rate of borrowing among students in different sectors, how community college students can benefit from access to loans, and the wide disparities in default by race and income.

CCRC offers a short primer on the multiple missions of these institutions, what kinds of students they enroll, what outcomes they produce, and some of the major issues they face.

This article establishes the importance of adjunct faculty in supporting student success, describes the experiences of adjunct faculty, and offers suggestions for disciplinary societies that seek to meet the needs of adjunct faculty.

This report examines how Ohio community colleges—which have been engaged in guided pathways reform for several years—are innovating within the model to provide scaled, personalized support to help students gain early academic momentum.

This set of three studies examines what states and community colleges can do to address the needs of racially minoritized adult learners who are pursuing postsecondary education and training as a path to re-employment, better jobs, and higher incomes.

This brief discusses why whole-college, guided pathways reforms hold promise for improving student success on a large scale, what they cost, and how the federal government can support their adoption.

This brief discusses the experiences, achievements, and challenges of 26 broad-access two- and four-year colleges that, in 2015, began steps to adopt or enhance technology-mediated advising practices to improve the way they support students.

This brief describes the substantial role community colleges play in workforce education, what innovative colleges are doing to improve programming and labor market outcomes for participants, and how the federal government can support these efforts.

Using administrative data from a large state community college system, this paper examines whether being exposed to a higher percentage of dual enrollment peers influences non-dual enrollment enrollees’ performance in college courses.

This brief describes the importance of nonacademic staff to the student experience and presents initial findings related to the Caring Campus initiative’s capacity to affect college culture and ground further change efforts.

This paper estimates the patterns and sources of White–Black and White–Hispanic enrollment gaps in Advancement Placement (AP) and dual enrollment programs across several thousand school districts and metropolitan areas in the United States.

Using descriptive methods as well as a quasi-experimental approach, this report examines the early college outcomes of Florida high school students who enrolled in a dual enrollment college algebra course.

This brief discusses how community college systems in four states—Indiana, Virginia, Texas, and Washington—supported large-scale changes to student placement practices in reaction to challenges associated with the COVID pandemic.

Drawing on interview data, this report discusses strategies that three guided pathways colleges use to help adult students enter programs of study, stay on path, and enhance learning.

This report summarizes enhancements to technology-based advising at three institutions and their effects on students' academic outcomes for four semesters after study entry.

This brief examines the relationship between BCC’s ASAP expansion and institutional change to illuminate how scaling a discrete reform can impact other areas of the college and change the way an institution serves all students.

This paper examines challenges embedded within the prevailing high school mathematics course sequence, which prioritizes algebra, and explores innovations that aim to provide curricula and pedagogy more aligned with students’ academic and career goals.

This paper examines the equity implications of existing reforms to developmental math and explores the potential of more targeted reforms to address factors such as stereotype threat, math anxiety, instructor bias, and tracking.

Drawing on research at six institutions, this guide is intended to help community college leaders understand the costs involved in implementing guided pathways reforms and develop plans for funding and sustaining them.

Drawing on data from 12 community colleges, this paper analyzes the resources required to implement guided pathways reforms and examines their feasibility and affordability, as well as their value for students.

This report describes impact findings from an evaluation of multiple measures assessment and placement at seven State University of New York (SUNY) community colleges.

This report presents findings on the implementation of technology-mediated advising reforms at California State University at Fresno, Montgomery County Community College, and the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Using data on two cohorts of Florida students who started public high school in 2007 and 2012, this report analyzes dual enrollment course-taking and outcomes by racial/ethnic group (Black, Hispanic, White) and course modality (face-to-face on-college-campus, face-to-face off-campus, and online).

Based on research conducted in three states, this report identifies five principles that undergird the strategies and practices of equitable dual enrollment partnerships between high schools and colleges.

Using state administrative data and propensity score matching, this study examines the characteristics and academic outcomes of community college students who switch majors.

Using administrative data from Florida, this article examines the effect of changing the grading scale from whole-letter grades to plus/minus grades on STEM major choice.

This paper examines returns to terminal associate degrees and certificates up to 11 years after students initially entered a community college in Ohio. The authors use an individual fixed-effects approach that controls for students’ pre-enrollment earnings and allows the returns to credential completion to vary over time.

This report describes findings from a study of a two-year initiative led by Achieving the Dream to develop and implement strategies to support adjunct faculty in improving student outcomes.

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.

Based on a forthcoming book chapter, this paper discusses how the development of an overall framing vision for student success, the implementation of evidence-based practices, and the establishment of a culture that is conducive to innovation can help colleges improve student outcomes.

Drawing on interviews with 96 first-year community college students, this journal article compares the roles of students' on- and off-campus relationships in providing information and support.

This practitioner packet provides guidance to colleges seeking to redesign their new student onboarding practices to better help students explore, choose, and plan a program of study best suited to their interests and aspirations.

This paper describes the professional development model used in CUNY Start, a program developed at the City University of New York to support entering students identified as academically underprepared in literacy and mathematics.