Download or read book Policy Levers to Strengthen Community College Transfer Student Success in Texas Policy Brief written by Thomas Bailey and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 32 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Texas relies heavily on its community colleges to provide low-cost access to undergraduate coursework for students pursuing a bachelor's degree. Yet, while the majority of Texas students who enter higher education through a community college enroll in transfer programs, only 35 percent transfer and only 15 percent earn a bachelor's degree within six years of starting at a community college. The Greater Texas Foundation asked the Community College Research Center (CCRC) to conduct an analysis of ways state policy could help to improve outcomes for community college transfer students in Texas. To do this, the authors first used National Student Clearinghouse data to examine the performance of Texas community colleges and universities in serving transfer students compared to two- and four-year institutions nationally. Second, they analyzed state transfer policies to better understand the policy environment and identify policies that may facilitate or inhibit transfer success in the state. Third, they conducted interviews with over 50 individuals who work with transfer students at 36 Texas colleges (18 two-year and 18 four-year institutions) to learn how state policy plays out on the ground with students and institutions. This report presents their main findings and recommendations.
Download or read book The Transfer Experience written by John N. Gardner and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 348 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-published with At last there is a handbook that everyone in higher education can use to help increase transfer student success. This comprehensive resource has been brought together to meet the need for a truly holistic approach to the transfer experience. The book brings together research, theory, practical applications, programmatic illustrations, case studies, encouragement, and inspiration, and is supplemented by an online compendium for continual updates of resources, case studies, and new developments in the world of transfer.Based on a totally different way of thinking about, understanding, and acting to increase transfer student success, The Transfer Experience goes far beyond the traditional, limited view of transfer as a technical process simply about articulating credits, a stage of student development, or a novel enrollment management strategy. Rather, the book introduces a stimulating array of new perspectives, resources, options, models, and recommendations for addressing the many needs of this huge cohort – making the academic, civic, and social justice cases for improving transfer at both transfer-sending and transfer-receiving institutions.
Download or read book The Role of the Community College in Texas written by Toby J. Park and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Post Recession Community College Reform written by Chet Jordan and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-07-23 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book analyses and evaluates several key community college reform programs that emerged after the Recession of 2008 and as a result of major initiatives in California, New York, Tennessee, Florida, Connecticut and Wisconsin. Because of the economic downturn in the early 21st Century, an already eroding financial base for public higher education saw even further losses. At the same time, enrollments were booming, particularly in the two-year sector where many students who would have traditionally forgone a college education, were now enrolling to ensure their competitiveness in a harsh labor market. Chapters in this book examine the development and implementation of initiatives and accountability measures imposed across the states by the Obama administration, and consider their effectiveness in reducing the impact of the loss of students, and their role in improving courses. This book will be of interest to postgraduates and researchers exploring the history of education in the United States, as well as academic administrators, faculty, and policy-makers with an interest in reform-based practices that have been successfully implemented in community colleges.
Download or read book Discredited written by Lauren Schudde and published by Harvard Education Press. This book was released on 2024-06-21 with total page 86 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incisive investigation of the often fraught student-transfer pathways from community colleges to four-year institutions—and a blueprint for process reform
Download or read book Transfer Students in Higher Education written by Mark Allen Poisel and published by First-Year Experience Monograp. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Transfer Students in Higher Education presents what we know about transfer students, addresses assumptions and myths about the transfer experience, and explores the changing demographics of this student group. Adopting a student-centered approach, the monograph offers strategies to begin (and continue) the work of serving students and creating transfer-friendly campus environments. Chapter authors explore the issue from the perspective of both sending and receiving institutions and provide research, case studies, and best practices to help institutions meet the challenges of enrollment, orientation, advisement, retention, and graduation of transfer students.
Download or read book Texas Student Success Council written by Michael Lawrence Collins and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011, a prominent Texas business group erected provocative billboards condemning low completion rates at the state's community colleges and questioning the value of tax dollars spent there. The Texas Association of Business put up the signs to prod community colleges to do more to increase student success and help create a better educated workforce. College leaders were outraged at the vitriolic public attack. Yet, just a year and a half later, the once apparent adversaries were working together to help community college students across the state. They cosigned a letter urging the Texas Legislature to support outcomes-based funding, a controversial strategy that provides financial incentives for institutions that increase the number of students who make progress toward and complete a postsecondary credential. This publication is a concise documentation of the work of the Texas Student Success Council, a group of diverse stakeholder groups in Texas who collaborated and were successful in bringing about some high leverage policy changes in the state's legislative session. It includes a summary of the Council's origins, accomplishments, process for setting its policy agenda, and recommendations for states seeking to implement a similar strategy. An appendix provides a list of the Texas Student Success Council Members as of January 2014.
Download or read book Discredited written by Lauren Schudde and published by . This book was released on 2024-09-03 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An incisive investigation of the often fraught student-transfer pathways from community colleges to four-year institutions--and a blueprint for process reform In Discredited, education scholars Lauren Schudde and Huriya Jabbar illuminate the successes and failures of the systems that support student transfer among postsecondary institutions. Summarizing the key challenges of various transfer pathways, Schudde and Jabbar show how the current decentralized, bureaucracy-ridden, and often confusing process undermines equity and access in higher education. They illustrate how transfer success is closely tied to how educational institutions disseminate information about credit portability, especially for vertical transfer between community colleges and destination universities, in which prospective transfer students often confront hidden curricula and unfounded biases about their academic preparedness. This deeply considered work is grounded in hundreds of interviews of students and personnel, data from a six-year longitudinal study in Texas, and a synthesis of five decades of research on college transfer. Presenting a field perspective, Schudde and Jabbar use strategic action fields, a framework that considers how rules and norms are maintained in an existing power structure, to examine the political-ecological contexts in which transfer-intending students and transfer-related college personnel interact within and across organizations. They frame transfer policy as a complex public higher education issue rather than an isolated community college problem. Schudde and Jabbar call for transfer reform and offer insight into how transfer outcomes could be improved through better transparency, centralized policy, and even government intervention.
Download or read book The Perceptions of Policymakers on the Transfer Pathway in Texas Public Higher Education written by Kimberly A. Faris and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community college students transfer to public universities experiencing a pathway filled with complexity and inequity. Transfer students are not able to graduate at the same pace as native students at the university and complete their baccalaureate degrees 18% below the rate of native students. Policymakers have attempted to address the baccalaureate gap. This qualitative study explored the perspectives of Texas policymakers and policy influencers on the efficacy of policies intended to improve transfer outcomes. This study investigated what experience participants have with transfer policy, what their perceptions of the transfer pathway are, and how their voices can refine an understanding of policy development and ways to improve student persistence. Purposeful sampling was used to explore the perspectives of 14 Texas policymakers and those that influence policy. Findings revealed that significant gaps exist between expectations and student realities and that the completion agenda is driving policy decisions. Participants perceived that transfer students have been ignored in the completion metrics, which influence institutional priorities. Moreover, the decentralized system of independent, autonomous institutions is a major contributor to inefficiencies such as excessive student credit hours. Improving the transferability of courses was a priority recommendation of all participants both because it benefits the State's economy and, more importantly, because it is in the best interest of students.
Download or read book Building Pathways to Transfer written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Opening Doors to Student Success written by Susan Scrivener and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 12 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Only one-third of all students who enter community colleges with the intent to earn a degree or certificate actually meet this goal within six years. MDRC launched the Opening Doors Demonstration in 2003--the first large-scale random assignment study in a community college setting--to tackle this problem. Partnering with six community colleges, MDRC helped develop and evaluated programs based on the following approaches: financial incentives, reforms in instructional practices, and enhancements in student services. Opening Doors provides some of the first rigorous evidence that a range of interventions can, indeed, improve educational outcomes for community college students. This policy brief describes the different strategies tested, discusses what has been learned from Opening Doors, and offers some suggestions to policymakers and practitioners for moving forward. (Contains 1 table and 2 figures.).
Download or read book The Road Ahead written by Christopher M. Mullin and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past few years, as the nation has attempted to emerge from a recession, people are increasingly turning to education as a means to return to work in an economy that demands new skills and a larger number of knowledge-based workers. The demand for more education has resulted in increased enrollments in postsecondary institutions, especially in community colleges, which have experienced substantial increases in enrollment since fall 2007. The demand felt on college campuses aligns with projections indicating a strong need for a more educated workforce. In response to the demands of students, as well as of business and industry, community colleges are rebalancing institutional missions and practices to focus more directly on ensuring student success. This brief presents data on educational attainment at community colleges, with an eye to what the data portend. One extremely positive conclusion can be reached: Educational attainment for all key populations is increasing at community colleges. The investments made in a community college education, by individuals and by society as a whole, are paying off. Over the past 20 years, the percent increase in credentials awarded has been double the percent increase in enrollment. These findings are even more pronounced for students of color. Consistent with other research, actual rates of transfer for students are much higher than commonly reported as well. These gains are the result of students, schools, families, and communities working in concert. They are also the result of innumerable partnerships and initiatives in which community colleges have been or continue to be engaged. Much more work has yet to be done by these stakeholders and their supporting partners, but the path to increasing student success is not untraveled. Short-Term Certificates are appended. (Contains 1 table, 11 figures and 2 notes.).
Download or read book Redesigning America s Community Colleges written by Thomas R. Bailey and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-09 with total page 301 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.
Download or read book Sealing the Gaps written by Abby Miller and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 54 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Driving the Direction of Transfer Pathways Reform written by David Altstadt and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite widely shared aspirations, the vast majority of community college students do not continue their studies at four-year colleges. In November 2013, "Jobs for the Future" convened higher education leaders and researchers to explore state-level policy strategies for restructuring community college in ways that enhance student progression through Associate's degree programs and into upper-tier university coursework. Building upon the convening, this policy brief sets out principles for how to approach transfer policy, advocating a three-legged stool approach that balances incentives, cross-institution convenings, and state-level activities and policies. The brief then describes four policy steps to design pathways that streamline entry and encourage progress toward completion of a two-year program of study, while also strengthening transitions to the university level with considerable academic credits toward a Bachelor's degree. [This brief was written with Gretchen Schmidt and Lara K. Couturier.].
Download or read book Test Drive written by Jobs for the Future and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 40 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Increasing demand for at least some postsecondary education in today's labor market has met with stagnating college completion rates. As a result, states have a growing interest in better understanding the challenges to improving graduation rates and in tracking student progress and success. Six states in the "Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count" initiative--Connecticut, Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Texas, and Virginia--have designed and tested a more complete and accurate way of measuring community college student performance and success than the current federal reporting requirements. This policy brief describes this new approach and compares it to the current federal system, highlights key findings from the pilot testing process and the links between state policies and the varying state results, and identifies the group's priorities for further refining the new measures and related benchmarks. The following appendixes are included: (1) Descriptive Data; (2) Summary of Results on Success; (3) Supplemental Summary Data on Transfer; (4) Florida Outcomes, by Enrollment Status and Age; (5) Six-Year Outcomes, by Age and College Readiness, Florida and Texas; and (6) Methodology for Cross-State Cohort Analysis of Community College System Outcomes. (Contains 2 tables, 9 figures, and 9 endnotes.).
Download or read book Differences in Student Success as a Function of Dual Credit Enrollment for Texas Community College Students written by Dorothy Brown Dixon and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Purpose The purpose of this journal-ready dissertation was to examine dual credit enrollment with respect to student demographic characteristics and to student success of Texas community college students. The first purpose was to describe the demographic characteristics with respect to gender and ethnicity/race of Texas community college students who completed a dual credit course while in high school. A second purpose was to analyze the extent to which differences were present in first semester GPAs by ethnicity/race and gender of Texas community college students who previously completed a dual credit course while in high school. Finally, a third purpose was to ascertain the degree to which differences were present in the second semester GPAs as a function of ethnicity/race and gender of Texas community college students who previously completed a dual credit course while in high school. Method A descriptive research design was used in the first article and a causal-comparative research design was present in the second and third articles in this journal-ready dissertation. Archival data, from a Texas community college district0́9s Institutional Research Division, were analyzed for the 2012-2013, 2013-2014, and the 2014-2015 academic years. Variables that were analyzed were: dual credit enrollment status, gender; ethnicity/race, first semester GPA, and second semester GPA. 0́3 Findings With respect to the demographic characteristics of students who had completed a dual credit course while in high school, almost two thirds of the community college students were females. White and Hispanic students constituted the two ethnic/racial groups with the highest percentages of students who had completed a dual credit course while in high school. Of note was the very low percentage of Black students who had completed a dual credit course while in high school. Regarding first semester GPAs and second semester GPAs, with few exceptions, students who had completed a dual credit course while enrolled in high school had statistically significantly higher GPAs than their counterparts who had not completed a dual credit course while enrolled in high school. These results were consistent across all three academic years. Implications for policy and for practice were made, along with recommendations for future research. The electronic version of this dissertation is accessible from http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11875/2176
