Publications

This report uses IPEDS and College Scorecard data to classify the credentials awarded by community colleges in 2022-23 and to assess which credentials are and are not likely to enable students to secure a living-wage job or transfer efficiently in a major.

This brief discusses findings and implications from two recent large studies of guided pathways that examined the scale at which colleges have implemented reforms and the association between adopted practices and early student outcomes.

Using institutional survey and administrative data, this paper examines the association between statewide adoption of guided pathways practices by community colleges in Tennessee, Ohio, and Washington and improvements in first-year student outcomes.

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 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.

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

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

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

This study documents the specific ways that community college career-technical programs are structured to support student success, and it provides a framework for examining structure to inform practice and guide future research efforts.

This Corridors of College Success brief highlights challenges involved in collective impact work and provides a lens for understanding why well-intentioned collective impact efforts may not take root.

This brief, the second in CCRC’s Corridors of College Success series, describes the challenges that early-stage collective impact communities face as they work to identify potential backbone organizations and establish a backbone structure.

The authors of this book argue that to substantially increase student completion, community colleges must engage in fundamental redesign and outline research-based strategies to help colleges achieve this goal.

This practitioner packet summarizes evidence supporting the guided pathways reform model, describes how one college implemented guided pathways, and offers tips for getting started on guided pathways reforms.

This chapter reports on a major college-wide effort to smooth students’ paths as they enter the college, choose a program, and progress to a credential.

This report reviews research evidence on college policies designed to facilitate on-time degree completion among students by encouraging them to enroll in at least 15 credits per semester.

This paper employs a novel graphical technique to illustrate the diverse enrollment patterns of community college students and examines the relationship between these patterns and successful student outcomes.

This publication describes efforts by a growing number of colleges and universities to create “guided pathways” designed to increase the rate at which students enter and complete a program of study.

This brief examines characteristics and course-taking patterns of students who accumulate a substantial number of college credits but do not earn an award by their fifth year of enrollment.

This publication examines the diversity of enrollment patterns among community college students and demonstrates a novel graphical technique for displaying large numbers of enrollment patterns.

This publication compares how long it takes students to reach important progression milestones based on their level of academic readiness upon entry.

This article reviews research on what community colleges and less selective public universities can do to graduate more students at a lower cost without sacrificing access or quality.

This publication, the second in CCRC’s Analytics series, examines the progression of community college students in transfer-oriented programs through the general education core curriculum.

This report examines the use of data on students by faculty, administrators, and student services staff at six Washington State colleges that joined Achieving the Dream in 2006–2007.

This report introduces an approach to examining students’ college experiences, identifying factors that catalyze or impede their progress, and using these insights to improve student outcomes.

This publication examines the hidden complexity of completion outcome data and offers an approach to teasing out the complex factors that affect student completion in order to boost student success.

This publication presents eight core ideas to help community college leaders and practitioners address the fundamental challenges to student success.

The first in CCRC's analytics series, this publication examines characteristics of students who drop out of college after only one semester.

This study examines the structure of community college career-technical programs and its association with program completion.

This paper argues that to improve completion rates, colleges must help students enter programs as soon as possible; it presents a method for measuring program entry and completion rates using transcript data.

A clustering algorithm is applied to the transcripts of a cohort of first-time students in the Washington State system in order to determine what programs of study they appear to be pursuing.

Administrative data from Washington State is used to chart the educational pathways of first-time community college students, with a focus on young, socioeconomically disadvantaged students.

Evidence from behavioral economics and psychology lends support for the idea that students are more likely to persist and succeed in programs with highly structured paths to completion.

This literature review locates the sources of challenges to academic momentum in both student characteristics as well as state and institutional practices and policies.

This paper presents findings from CCRC's study on the experiences and educational outcomes of older and younger community college students.