Publications

This report, featuring four associated case studies, describes key strategies and practices undertaken by innovative dual enrollment partnerships; it concludes with lessons for integrating college coursework into existing career-focused high school programs.

Drawing on the administration of a multi-wave survey, this report describes how combining multi-channel communication, financial incentives, initial in-person classroom visits, technical coordination, and other measures can address survey recruitment and retention challenges.

Drawing on research, institutional case studies, and first-person narratives, this book presents five principles to guide the next phase of community college reform and help leaders forge lasting partnerships that improve outcomes for a broader group of students.

This brief explores how Marion Technical College leveraged grants to institutionalize advising reforms and ensure all students have an individualized full-program plan connected to their career goals.

This brief highlights efforts at Southwest Wisconsin Technical College to integrate career, educational, and financial planning to support student success.

This brief showcases how Tallahassee State College reimagined its career exploration and long-term academic planning processes to create a stronger foundation for its 16,000 students to complete degrees or successfully transfer.

Based on research from "More Essential Than Ever" and other recent research, this brief shows how educational plans convert abstract choices into personalized roadmaps in order to improve student persistence, timely program completion, and long-term career success.

Using data from a multi-campus public college system, this brief shows that differences in first post-college jobs—primarily starting salaries—can explain two thirds or more of the Year 5 earnings gap between otherwise similar low- and high-SES graduates.

This tool and accompanying guide are designed to help community colleges assess the extent to which they have implemented at scale key practices for strengthening guided pathways, as laid out in CCRC's recent book.

This new fact sheet explores students' basic needs—including nutrition, housing, childcare, transportation, and healthcare—and provides policy considerations for improving basic needs supports.

This report revisits a randomized controlled trial of the CUNY ASAP program that began in 2010 and assesses the program's long-term impacts on educational attainment and labor market outcomes over fourteen years.

Drawing on data from interviews and site visits at three Texas community colleges and their partner high schools, this paper examines how college and high school staff navigate boundaries between their organizations and make decisions to support dual enrollment students and courses.

Drawing on examples from around the country, this policy brief identifies five strategies states can use to help colleges and school districts adopt and sustain purposeful dual enrollment practices that lead to greater opportunity for students.

Using information and cost data from several CUNY campuses, this brief describes the FWS program’s core administrative components, estimates the campus costs of its implementation, and shows how program scale, staffing, and technology shape these costs.

This report details promising early effects of reform at ten colleges participating in the Unlocking Opportunity network and provides recommendations for how community colleges can strengthen program value and help more students access good jobs and bachelor's degrees.

Drawing on faculty and student survey data and interviews, this brief reports on a pilot study of the SDL Instructional Model and finds that faculty and students perceived the model as valuable and distinct from typical practice in online courses.

This model offers a set of research-based strategies designed to help students more effectively manage their learning in online and hybrid courses, includes guidance for instructors, and provides recommendations for adopting and scaling the strategies across institutions.

Drawing on student surveys, staff interviews, and administrative data, this brief describes the pandemic-era evolution of the FWS program across multiple undergraduate CUNY colleges, highlighting institutional management challenges, student access issues, and common academic benefits of work-study jobs.

This new fact sheet explores student debt among community college students and provides policy considerations for supporting students in making informed borrowing decisions and successfully repaying their loans.

Drawing on three rounds of site visits to eight institutions, this brief examines how Virginia community colleges implemented G3 policy and offers lessons for developing, strengthening, and expanding access to short-term training programs for high-demand jobs.