Publications

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.

Based on interviews and other data, this brief describes key elements of English transition curricula in seven states and highlights ways this type of intervention may help prepare students for college.

Using interview, focus group, and survey data, this brief explores the experiences of part-time faculty at six Achieving the Dream leader colleges working to engage adjunct faculty in student success initiatives.

This report describes the Mathematics Pathways to Completion project developed by the Charles A. Dana Center and the condititions that facilitate the statewide implementation of math pathways reforms.

This paper, published in Social Sciences, examines the idealizations and illusions of student choice and marketization in higher education policy in England.

This brief, written in collaboration with the Education Commission of the States, describes three math pathways models, lays out the evidence for their effectiveness, and gives recommendations for the effective implementation of math pathways.

This CAPSEE working paper compares credential production patterns of minority-serving institutions (MSIs) and non-MSIs by field of study and examines the extent to which they correspond to employment industry clusters in Alabama and California.

This report evaluates the implementation and impacts of Enhancing Programs for IT Certification (EPIC), a program that aims to expand access to computer and medical information technology credentials at six Kentucky community colleges.

This report from the Center for the Analysis for Postsecondary Readiness (CAPR) examines implementation of a multiple measures placement system at seven State University of New York community colleges and presents results on first-term impacts.

This report describes the guided pathways reforms taking place at the 13 community colleges in the Tennessee Board of Regents, along with promising trends in first-year momentum among entering students.

This report describes the early findings of a random assignment evaluation and implementation study of CUNY Start by CCRC, MDRC, and the City University of New York.

Drawing on lessons from 10 Minnesota and Wisconsin colleges that piloted multiple measures systems for placing students into developmental and college-level courses, this guide provides recommendations for other colleges interested in implementing or testing their own multiple measures systems.

This report describes how three institutions—the University of North Carolina, Charlotte; California State University, Fresno; and Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania—are approaching comprehensive, technology-based advising reforms.

This brief published by Education Commission of the States discusses state approaches that systematically broaden dual enrollment access and provide pre-collegiate experiences to middle- and lower-achieving students.

This Brookings Institution report uses data from the U.S. Department of Education to examine whether disparities in student loan default rates by race/ethnicity and institution sector can be explained by other factors, along with what happens after a default and whether this also varies across student subgroups.

This paper identifies the effects of licenses on a set of labor market outcomes for the college-educated workforce using newly available national Current Population Survey data merged with data from the U.S. Department of Labor on state-level, occupation-specific licensing requirements.

This paper looks at baseline key performance indicators (KPIs) for 26 two- and four-year institutions that received grants to implement technology-mediated advising reforms.

Using National Student Clearinghouse data, this paper introduces a two-stage, input-adjusted, value-added analytic framework for identifying partnerships of two- and four-year institutions that are particularly effective in enabling students to transfer and earn bachelor’s degrees.

This CCRC working paper examines the perspectives of college personnel engaged in the consideration, launch, and use of predictive analytics tools for targeted advising.

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.