Publications

This report uses student enrollment and degree records from the National Student Clearinghouse to examine who enrolls in community college dual enrollment courses and what happens to them after high school.

With the goal of informing federal higher education policy decisions, this brief for the Urban Institute suggests federal student aid reform that simplifies the eligibility and application process.

This report describes how Ohio’s two-year colleges are approaching guided pathways reforms, focusing on innovations they have implemented in recent years that can serve as building blocks as they seek to transform their policies, practices, and culture following the guided pathways model.

This CAPR working paper provides an overview of the history of college placement testing, with a focus on nonselective colleges. The authors discuss the limitations of placement tests, the consequences of placement errors, and the movement toward changing systems of placement; a typology of approaches to assessment and placement is also described.

This set of tools aims to help community colleges and broad-access four-year colleges assess their work on technology-mediated advising and student support, sometimes referred to as Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS).

Using interview, focus group, and case study data, this paper documents the perceptions and experiences of faculty members in the midst of statewide reform efforts in Virginia and North Carolina to integrate developmental reading and writing courses.

Using interview data from students at three community colleges, this paper examines shifts in confidence that students experience early in their college careers.

This study explores the influence of different types of leadership approaches on the implementation of a technology-mediated advising reform at six colleges, and assesses which types of leadership are associated with transformative organizational change.

This review draws from the experiences of colleges awarded the Kisco Foundation’s Kohlberg Prize to highlight the practical and philosophical challenges involved in creating integrated services for student veterans.

Based on a mixed-methods study at six colleges, this brief examines the domestic population served by American Honors; its key programmatic features; and community college student, faculty, and staff perspectives on the program.

This Brookings report discusses what role the Federal Work-Study program might have in a modern “college completion and career readiness” agenda.

Using interview data from first-year students at City Colleges of Chicago (CCC), this brief describes students’ reactions to important components of CCC’s recent guided pathways reform efforts.

Using data from two state systems, this paper examines whether it is more efficient for bachelor’s degree seekers to start at a two-year college.

This chapter argues that substantially increasing college completion rates requires comprehensive institutional reform with a focus on measurable student success, an intentional and cohesive package of programmatic components, and a culture of evidence.

This paper addresses empirical challenges in identifying stackable credentials, distinguishes three types of stackable awards, and estimates the number of persons who earn such awards. It then discusses the utility of these awards in meeting labor market demands and needs of students.

This report provides insight into how colleges are planning and implementing “guided pathways” reforms based on the early work of 30 colleges participating in the American Association of Community Colleges’ (AACC) Pathways Project.

In CCRC's 2017 newsletter, Director Thomas Bailey discusses how CAPSEE research has contributed to the understanding of the value of investing in a college education.

This report examines the consequences of ending free college in England, and considers what lessons may be drawn for the U.S. policy conversation.

This paper provides an overview of undergraduate financial aid to inform discussions of the future of undergraduate education in the United States and the role of financial aid within it.

This CAPSEE working paper reviews results from fixed effects models of the earnings gains from completing an associate degree and compares them with ordinary least squares model estimates.

This CAPSEE working paper and accompanying brief review recent evidence from eight states on the labor market returns to credit accumulation, certificates, and associate degrees from community colleges using large-scale, statewide administrative datasets.

Based on recent CAPSEE studies in two states, this brief discusses the motivations for satisfactory academic progress requirements for federal aid, examines how community college students are affected, and assesses the implications for program efficiency and equity.

This brief discusses current research, including CAPSEE analysis, regarding both the effectiveness of the Federal Work-Study (FWS) program and its equity in terms of the distribution of funds.

Using an administrative data set from one state, this paper examines the effects of receiving a modest Pell Grant on financial aid packages, labor supply while in school, and academic outcomes for community college students.

This practitioner packet summarizes CCRC’s research on technology-mediated advising reform and discusses how institutions are attempting to transform advising systems so that they can support a more intensive and personalized case-management model.

Using site visit data from three community colleges and four high schools, this paper explores how the institutional context of the high schools compared with that of the colleges in ways that may have affected the implementation and efficacy of computer-mediated mathematics.

In this brief, the authors propose three measures of early academic momentum that colleges can use to gauge whether institutional reforms are improving student outcomes

Based on three sets of analyses, this report to the Greater Texas Foundation recommends ways that state policy could help to improve outcomes for community college transfer students in Texas.

This CAPSEE working paper uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to provide new, nationally representative, non-experimental estimates of the returns to degrees, as well as to assess the possible limitations of single-state, administrative-data-based estimates.

This book explores the how and why of the federal regulatory policymaking process as it pertains to higher education, financial aid, and student loan debt.

This journal article examines the impacts of different levels of developmental reading and writing on students’ academic outcomes.

This CAPSEE working paper examines the prevalence and consequences of Pell Grant recipients’ failure to meet the standards for satisfactory academic progress required for grant renewal.

This NBER working paper uses state administrative data and unemployment records to construct a variety of possible institution-level labor market outcome metrics to explore how sensitive institutional ratings are to the choice of labor market metric, length of follow-up, and inclusion of adjustments for student characteristics.

This chapter examines the use of technology and other structural changes to encourage comprehensive advising reforms.

This chapter describes the structure and implementation of a redesign of developmental education in the Virginia Community College System, discusses preliminary descriptive findings from an evaluation of the redesign, and shares lessons for the field.

Using proximity to the closest four-year college as an instrumental variable, this CAPSEE working paper analyzes public higher education data from an anonymous state to examine how enrolling in summer credits can impact college and labor market outcomes.

This practice guide presents six evidence-based recommendations for college and university faculty, administrators, and advisors working to improve the success of students academically underprepared for college.

This report investigates the national landscape of computer science students at community colleges in order to better understand student behaviors and institutional characteristics that support or hinder community college students’ efforts to attain a computer science bachelor’s degree.

This review describes the early experiences of five colleges that received the Kisco Foundation’s Kohlberg Prize, a grant aimed at making community colleges more welcoming and better able to meet the needs of veteran students.

This book chapter replicates and extends analyses completed in other statewide studies and estimates returns to credentials and credit accumulation for first-time college students who enrolled in the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) in 2004–2005 using a classic Mincerian approach.

This book is the culmination of a three-year study of performance funding in Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee. Based on interviews with state officials and staff at 18 public institutions, the book delves into the policy implications of performance funding, which ties state financial support of colleges and universities to institutional performance.

This brief discusses four colleges’ STEM-focused iPASS implementation, including their reasons for undertaking reform, their plans for piloting and scaling up iPASS, and early evidence of change.

In this report for Brookings, Judith Scott-Clayton lays out a new analysis that shows that the gap in student debt between Black and White bachelor's degree earners triples in the four years after graduation.

This paper examines the current state of the literature on Integrated Planning and Advising for Student Success (iPASS), an increasingly popular approach to technology-mediated advising reform.

Building on Karp's 2011 framework of nonacademic support, this article explores the evidence that holistic support can encourage community college students’ success.

This paper utilizes two complementary quasi-experimental strategies to identify causal effects of the WV PROMISE scholarship, a broad-based state merit aid program, up to 10 years post–college entry and examine important outcomes that have not previously been examined, including homeownership, neighborhood characteristics, and financial management.

This chapter in the book Matching Students to Opportunity examines the matching process between students and college programs or majors, primarily in community colleges.

This paper examines technology-mediated advising reform in order to contribute to the understanding of how colleges engage in transformative change to improve student outcomes.

Using national data on baccalaureate recipients in 1993 and 2008, this CAPSEE working paper examines labor market and debt outcomes four years after students graduate, with a focus on exploring heterogeneity by institution type and major, as well as trends over time.

Using student-level data from the Tennessee Board of Regents, this paper explores the academic and economic consequences of taking higher or lower credit loads in the first semester and first year of college.