Publications

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.

This paper discusses what is known about humanities coursework in community colleges, outlines key challenges facing humanities education in this sector, and considers approaches to addressing these challenges

This report builds off previous research on American Honors to look at the unintended consequences of college promise programs for the economic mobility of high-achieving, low-income students.

This study compares the out-of-sample predictive power of early momentum metrics—13 near-term success measures suggested by the literature—with that of metrics from machine-learning-based models that employ approximately 500 predictors for community college credential completion.

This journal article explores similarities and dissimilarities of higher education policies in England and the United States with an eye to what each country can learn from the other regarding the reduction of social class and racial/ethnic differences in higher education access and success.

This report examines the efforts of six state higher education systems to improve student outcomes and close opportunity gaps in mathematics as part of a three-year project led by the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin.

In this Innovative Higher Education article, the authors examine the development and dissolution of a partnership between a privately held firm and six community colleges, which had established honors programs with the goal of facilitating students' transfer to selective institutions.

Drawing on data from six community colleges, this paper estimates the effects of part-time faculty versus full-time faculty on students’ current and subsequent course outcomes in developmental and gateway courses and explores potential explanations for these effects.

This paper explores the dynamics in and around an institution that influence how advisors and students experience technology-mediated advising reforms, along with the opportunities and challenges these dynamics create for colleges.

This book chapter describes key principles of CCRC's evidence-based framework for advising redesign, which emphasizes a sustained, strategic, integrated, proactive, and personalized (SSIPP) approach to advising.

This report describes trends in key performance indicators among the 26 two- and four-year institutions that participated in the Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS) grant initiative from 2011 to 2017.

This study uses a randomized controlled trial to evaluate the efficacy of multiple measures assessment programs at five colleges in Minnesota and Wisconsin and also examines the implementation and cost of the programs.

This article discusses the origins, implementation, and impacts of neoliberal policies by examining the case of performance-based funding for higher education in the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. It provides recommendations for how to improve performance funding and how to construct policy models that go behind the narrow imaginings of neoliberal theory.

This paper examines the labor market gains for students who enrolled at for-profit colleges after beginning their postsecondary education in community college.

This CAPR report examines how four Texas community colleges implemented Dana Center Mathematics Pathways (DCMP) and the impact of DCMP on student outcomes over as many as four semesters. Costs of the initiative and student perspectives are also discussed.

This CAPR report documents developmental education practices used in broad-access two- and four-year colleges across the country based on a 2016 survey of public two- and four-year colleges and private, nonprofit four-year colleges as well as interviews with institutional and state leaders.

This handbook presents a wide range of research on adults who have low literacy skills. It looks at the cognitive, affective, and motivational factors underlying adult literacy; adult literacy in different countries; and the educational approaches being taken to help improve adults’ literacy skills.

In this short essay, Shanna Jaggars (coauthor of Redesigning America's Community Colleges) and Amanda Folk (head of teaching and learning at the Ohio State Libraries) discuss how librarians' expertise could be harnessed to support guided pathways reforms.

This research brief describes findings from a survey about mathematics course offerings at institutions in six states implementing mathematics pathways.

CCRC’s 2018-2020 Biennial Report highlights major findings from the center’s research, including on multiple measures assessment, personalized advising, guided pathways, ...

This essay compares broad academic and vocational program goals, embodied skills, tasks, and jobs, with a focus primarily on community college students.

This short report provides a rationale for implementing Lesson Study, a collaborative and structured professional development approach, in the community college context.

Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this CAPSEE working paper examines nonpecuniary labor market outcomes associated with different levels of postsecondary educational attainment.

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.

High schools across the country are implementing transition curricula to boost college readiness. This short publication offers an overview of course design options for educators thinking about implementing transition courses.

This paper employs a difference-in-difference approach to examine the credit, credential completion, and labor market outcomes resulting from the year-round Pell using a state administrative dataset from a community college system.