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 The Costs of Completion written by Robin G. Isserles and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 2021-12-07 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: To improve community college success, we need to consider the lived realities of students. Our nation's community colleges are facing a completion crisis. The college-going experience of too many students is interrupted, lengthening their time to completing a degree—or worse, causing many to drop out altogether. In The Costs of Completion, Robin G. Isserles contextualizes this crisis by placing blame on the neoliberal policies that have shaped public community colleges over the past thirty years. The disinvestment of state funding, she explains, has created austerity conditions, leading to an overreliance on contingent labor, excessive investments in advisement technologies, and a push to performance outcomes like retention and graduation rates for measuring student and institutional success. The prevailing theory at the root of the community college completion crisis—academic momentum—suggests that students need to build momentum in their first year by becoming academically integrated, thereby increasing their chances of graduating in a timely fashion. A host of what Isserles terms "innovative disruptions" have been implemented as a way to improve on community college completion, but because disruptions are primarily driven by degree attainment, Isserles argues that they place learning and developing as afterthoughts while ignoring the complex lives that define so many community college students. Drawing on more than twenty years of teaching, advising, and researching largely first-generation community college students as well as an analysis of five years of student enrollment patterns, college experiences, and life narratives, Isserles takes pains to center students and their experiences. She proposes initiatives created in accordance with a care ethic, which strive to not only get students through college—quantifying credit accumulation and the like—but also enable our most precarious students to flourish in a college environment. Ultimately, The Costs of Completion offers a deeper, more complex understanding of who community college students are, why and how they enroll, and what higher education institutions can do to better support them.

Download or read book Student Success in the Community College written by Terry U. O'Banion and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-12-15 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For much of the twentieth century, the definition of success for most community colleges revolved around student retention and graduation. This definition no longer works—if it ever did. In Student Success in the Community College: What Really Works? respected community college leaders, researchers, and innovators argue that student success is about redesigning community colleges in a manner that is consistent with each college’s mission, goals, student population, and resources. Concluding that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to increasing student success, chapter authors analyze national, state, and regional efforts to increase student success; identify principles institutions can use to frame student success initiatives; and outline specific actions community colleges can take to increase student—and institutional—success. Student Success in the Community College: What Really Works? also provides concrete examples of effective student success initiatives in a variety of community college settings.

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 Promising and High Impact Practices Student Success Programs in the Community College Context written by Gloria Crisp and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-09-21 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With calls for community colleges to play a greater role in increasing college completion, promising or high-impact practices (HIPs) are receiving attention as means to foster persistence, degree completion, and other desired academic outcomes. These include learning communities, orientation, first-year seminars, and supplemental instruction, among many others. This volume explores the latest research on: how student success program research is conceptualized and operationalized, evidence for ways in which interventions foster positive student outcomes, critical inquiry of how students themselves experience them, and challenges and guidance regarding program design, implementation and evaluation. This is the 175th volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.

Download or read book Comprehensive Reform for Student Success written by Nan L. Maxwell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2017-01-19 with total page 117 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community colleges face pressure to “do more with less” that have prompted many college leaders to consider fundamental changes to the ways they have typically done business. Because piecemeal solutions have not often been effective or efficient, colleges are moving far beyond discreet “programs” or “interventions,” and are attempting to implement comprehensive reform efforts. This volume conceptualizes comprehensive reform as being marked by: a focus on student success; a theory of change that ties programmatic components together in an intentional and cohesive package, implemented at multiple levels throughout the college and touching the majority of students; and a culture of evidence that uses data to continuously assess programs and processes against student success. Presenting original analyses that describe the rationale for comprehensive reform, this volume examines the challenges involved in implementing, evaluating, and sustaining those efforts. This is the 176th volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.

Download or read book Student Success in Community Colleges written by Deborah J. Boroch and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2010-02-22 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Student Success in Community Colleges As more and more underprepared students enroll in college, basic skills education is an increasing concern for all higher education institutions. Student Success in Community Colleges offers education leaders, administrators, faculty, and staff an essential resource for helping these students succeed and advance in college. By applying the book's self-assessment instrument, colleges can pinpoint how their current activities align with the most effective proven practices. Once the gaps are identified, community college leaders can determine the best strategic direction for improvement. Drawing on a broad knowledge base and illustrative examples from the most current literature, the authors cover organizational, administrative, and instructional practices; program components; student support services and strategies; and professional learning and development. Designed to help engage community college leadership and practitioners in addressing the practices, structures, and obstacles that enhance or impede the success of basic skills students, the book's strategies can be tailored to various institutional levels, showing how to unite faculty, staff, and administrators in a cooperative effort to effect institutional change. Finally, Student Success in Community Colleges reveals how investing in a comprehensive basic skills infrastructure can be a financially sustainable model for the institution as well as substantially beneficial to students and society. "This is a most unusual and valuable book; it is packed with careful analysis and practical suggestions for improving basic skills programs in community colleges. Compiled by a team of practicing professionals in teaching, administration, and research, it is knowledgeable about what has been done and imaginative and practical about what can be done to improve the access and success of community college students." K. Patricia Cross, professor of higher education, emerita, University of California, Berkeley "For its first hundred years the community college was committed primarily to access; in its second hundred years the commitment has changed dramatically to success. This book provides the best road map to date on how community colleges can reach that goal." Terry O'Banion, president emeritus, League for Innovation, and director, Community College Leadership Program, Walden University "This guide is the most comprehensive source of information about all facets of basic skills or developmental education. It will be invaluable not just to community college educators across the nation, but also to those in high schools and four-year colleges who share similar problems." W. Norton Grubb, David Gardner Chair in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley

Download or read book Increasing Persistence written by Wesley R. Habley and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-06-25 with total page 513 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: INCREASING PERSISTENCE "Of all the books addressing the puzzle of student success and persistence, I found this one to be the most helpful and believe it will be extremely useful to faculty and staff attempting to promote student success. The authors solidly ground their work in empirical research, and do a brilliant job providing both an overview of the relevant literature as well as research-based recommendations for intervention." GAIL HACKETT, PH.D., provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs; professor, counseling and educational psychology, University of Missouri, Kansas City Research indicates that approximately forty percent of all college students never earn a degree anywhere, any time in their lives. This fact has not changed since the middle of the 20th century. Written for practitioners and those who lead retention and persistence initiatives at both the institutional and public policy levels, Increasing Persistence offers a compendium on college student persistence that integrates concept, theory, and research with successful practice. It is anchored by the ACT's What Works in Student Retention (WWISR) survey of 1,100 colleges and universities, an important resource that contains insights on the causes of attrition and identifies retention interventions that are most likely to enhance student persistence.?? The authors focus on three essential conditions for student success: students must learn; students must be motivated, committed, engaged, and self-regulating; and students must connect with educational programs consistent with their interests and abilities. The authors offer a detailed discussion of the four interventions that research shows are the most effective for helping students persist and succeed: assessment and course placement, developmental education initiatives, academic advising, and student transition programming. Finally, they urge broadening the current retention construct, providing guidance to policy makers, campus leaders, and individuals on the contributions they can make to student success.

Download or read book What Excellent Community Colleges Do written by Joshua S. Wyner and published by Harvard Education Press. This book was released on 2019-01-02 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In What Excellent Community Colleges Do, Joshua S. Wyner draws on the insights and evidence gained in administering the inaugural Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. This book identifies four domains of excellence—degree completion, equity, student learning, and labor market success—and describes in rich detail the policies and practices that have allowed some community colleges to succeed in these domains. By starting with a holistic definition of excellence, measuring success against that definition, and then identifying practices and policies that align with high levels of student success, the author seeks to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about improving student success in community colleges.

Download or read book Becoming a Student Ready College written by Tia Brown McNair and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2016-06-27 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Boost student success by reversing your perspective on college readiness The national conversation asking "Are students college-ready?" concentrates on numerous factors that are beyond higher education's control. Becoming a Student-Ready College flips the college readiness conversation to provide a new perspective on creating institutional value and facilitating student success. Instead of focusing on student preparedness for college (or lack thereof), this book asks the more pragmatic question of what are colleges and universities doing to prepare for the students who are entering their institutions? What must change in an institution's policies, practices, and culture in order to be student-ready? Clear and concise, this book is packed with insightful discussion and practical strategies for achieving your ambitious student success goals. These ideas for redesigning practices and policies provide more than food for thought—they offer a real-world framework for real institutional change. You'll learn: How educators can acknowledge their own biases and assumptions about underserved students in order to allow for change New ways to advance student learning and success How to develop and value student assets and social capital Strategies and approaches for creating a new student-focused culture of leadership at every level To truly become student-ready, educators must make difficult decisions, face the pressures of accountability, and address their preconceived notions about student success head-on. Becoming a Student-Ready College provides a reality check based on today's higher education environment.

Download or read book Community College Student Success written by Vanessa Smith Morest and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2012-12-19 with total page 131 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Student Success: From Board Rooms to Classrooms analyzes the emerging body of scholarly research on student success in an accessible and readable way that community college leaders will find both interesting and relevant. To further illustrate the connections between research and practice, case studies are drawn from community colleges that are engaging in reform. Morest offers a three-pronged approach for community college leaders seeking to improve the success of their students. First, community college leaders need to look around at the technological transformation that has occurred in other service sectors and import some of these ideas to student services. Second, community college leaders need to explicitly socialize their students to become college students and to bond with their community college. Finally, improving the quality of teaching is particularly important with regard to developmental education, where students are attempting to master material that they have ostensibly been taught in the past.

Download or read book Increasing Student Success at Community Colleges written by Lumina Foundation for Education and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 15 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Applying the College Completion Agenda to Practice written by Katherine L. Hughes and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-09-12 with total page 112 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume profiles some of the innovative reforms community college practitioners are engaged in, focusing on supporting students through to graduation. While much has been written at the federal and state levels about the need to improve student completion rates, this volume translates that imperative into action at the campus level. It presents the practitiners' voices and experiences in: Changing academic content Pedagogy Student support services And other critical components of community colleges. Each chapter focuses on either a particular campus-based reform or on a cross-cutting approach or set of issues relevant for most campuses. The volume highlights opportunities, describes challenges and how they were overcome, and provides guidance that can be used by other postsecondary practitioners involved in large-scale—campus, multi-campus, or system-level—reforms that aim to increase student success. This is the 167th volume of this Jossey-Bass quarterly report series. Essential to the professional libraries of presidents, vice presidents, deans, and other leaders in today's open-door institutions, New Directions for Community Colleges provides expert guidance in meeting the challenges of their distinctive and expanding educational mission.

Download or read book 13 Ideas That Are Transforming the Community College World written by Terry U. O'Banion and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-03-15 with total page 334 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America’s community colleges are experiencing the most creative and substantive period of transformation in their 118-year history. There has never been so much research, so much support from foundations, and so much commitment from national leaders to reimagine community colleges for today and for the future. 13 Ideas that Are Transforming the Community College World, edited by Terry U. O’Banion, is the seminal work that captures the major ideas faced by community college leaders in this period of transformation. The book includes 23 authors representing 12 national organizations, perhaps the most significant and substantive list of individuals ever to participate in an edited book on the community college. Each author is a nationally-recognized authority on his or her chapter, and all have played major roles as leaders of national organizations.

Download or read book Working With Students in Community Colleges written by Lisa S. Kelsay and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-published with This timely volume addresses the urgent need for new strategies and better ways to serve community colleges’ present and future students at a time of rapid diversification, not just racially and ethnically, but including such groups as the undocumented, international students, older adult learners and veterans, all of whom come with varied levels of academic and technical skillsThe contributing researchers, higher education faculty, college presidents, and community college administrators provide thorough understanding of student groups who have received scant attention in the higher education literature. They address the often unconscious barriers to access our institutions have erected and describe emerging strategies, frameworks, and pilot projects that can ease students’ transition into college and through the maze of the college experience to completion. They offer advice on organizational culture, on defining institutional outcomes, on aligning shifting demographics with the multiple missions of the community college, on strengthening the collaboration of student and academic affairs to leverage their respective roles and resources, and on engaging with the opportunities afforded by technology.Divided into three parts – understanding today’s community college campuses; supporting today’s community college learners; and specialized populations and communities – this book offers a vision and solutions that should inform the work of faculty, administrators, presidents, and board members.

Download or read book Activity Systems Analysis Methods written by Lisa C. Yamagata-Lynch and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2010-07-15 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the last two decades, there has been growing interest in pursuing theoretical paradigms that capture complex learning situations. Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is one of several theoretical frameworks that became very popular among educational researchers because it conceptualizes individuals and their environment as a holistic unit of analysis. It assumes a non-dualistic ontology and acknowledges the complexities involved in human activity in natural settings. Recently, reputable journals such as the American Psychologist, Educational Psychologist, and Educational Researcher that are targeted for a wide-range of audience have included articles on CHAT. In many of such articles, CHAT has been referred to as social constructivism, sociocultural theory, or activity theory. Activity systems analysis is one of the popular methods among CHAT researchers for mapping complex human interactions from qualitative data. However, understanding the methods involved in activity systems analysis is a challenging task for many researchers. This difficulty derives from several reasons. First the original texts of CHAT are in Russian and there have been numerous authors who report on the difficulties of reconciling translation problems of the works of original authors’ such as Vygotsky and Leontiev. Second, in North America activity systems analysis has deviated from the Russian scholars’ intentions and Engeström’s original work using the triangle model to identify tensions to overcome and bring about sociopolitical change in participant practices. Third, to this date there are numerous publications on the theoretical background of activity theory and studies reporting the results of using activity systems analysis for unpacking qualitative data sets, but there have been no methodological publications on how researchers engage in activity systems analysis. Thus, there is a dearth of literature in both book and journal publications that guide researchers on the methodological issues involving activity systems analysis.

Download or read book Reinventing the Open Door written by Gunder Myran and published by Amer. Assn. of Community Col. This book was released on 2009 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Offers a new, broader model of the open-door philosophy of community colleges to better serve an increasingly diverse student population by not only ensuring access to higher education, but also by ensuring success, a campus environment of inclusiveness, and the colleges' engagement with the communities they serve"--Provided by publisher.