Download or read book Success in Community College Do Institutions Differ written by Charles T. Clotfelter and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 34 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community colleges are complex organizations and assessing their performance, though important, is difficult. Compared to four-year colleges and universities, community colleges serve a more diverse population and provide a wider variety of educational programs that include continuing education and technical training for adults, and diplomas, associates degrees, and transfer credits for recent high school graduates. Focusing solely on the latter programs of North Carolina's community colleges, we measure the success of each college along two dimensions: attainment of an applied diploma, or degree; or completion of the coursework required to transfer to a four-year college or university. We address three questions. First, how much variation is there across the institutions in these measures of student success? Second, how do these measures of success differ across institutions after we adjust for the characteristics of the enrolled students? Third, how do our measures compare to the measures of success used by the North Carolina Community College System? We find that most of the system's colleges cannot be statistically distinguished from one another along either dimension. Appended are: (1) Variable Definitions for Student-Level Table; and (2) Variable Definitions for Institutional-Level Tables. (Contains 3 figures, 4 tables and 12 footnotes.).

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 Community College Student Success What Institutional Characteristics Make a Difference written by Thomas Bailey and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 41 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this study is to determine the institutional characteristics that affect the success of community college students as measured by the individual student probability of completing a certificate or degree or transferring to a baccalaureate institution. While there is extensive research on the institutional determinants of educational outcomes for K-12 education and a growing literature on this topic for baccalaureate institutions, few researchers have attempted to address the issue for community colleges. Using individual level data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) and institutional level data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), we address two methodological challenges associated with research on community college students: unobserved institutional effects and attendance at multiple institutions. The most consistent results across specifications are the negative relationship between individual success and larger institutional size, and the proportion of part-time faculty and minority students.

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 The Community s College written by Robert L. Pura and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-07-03 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Co-published with An Agenda for Leaders / A Text for Leadership CoursesWhile community colleges promote American ideals of democracy, opportunity, and social mobility; they provide a vital, accessible, and affordable education for nearly 12 million first-generation, economically-disadvantaged, and minoritized students; are engines of local workforce and economic development; and enroll nearly half of all students who go on to complete a four-year degree; they remain the least resourced and the least funded institutions in the United States.Offering the insights of the former president of Greenfield Community College—located in Massachusetts’s poorest rural county—who was a national leader in community college and higher education organizations as well as closely involved with local businesses and organizations; and commentary and background data provided by Professor of Higher Education and Chair of the Department of Leadership in Education at the University of Massachusetts Boston, this book addresses the challenges that community colleges face as they strive to achieve their complex missions in a changing world.By providing vivid accounts of the diversity of students that community colleges serve, the complexity of their missions—from dual enrollment with high schools, to vocational training, adult education, and transfer to four-year colleges—and the role they play in supporting and responding to the needs of local business, as well in regional economic development, the authors make the case for increased investment, while at the same time making apparent to all stakeholders—from policy makers and trustees to college leaders, faculty and staff—how they can contribute to the vital development of human capacities.Community colleges are open-access, train nearly 80% of all first responders, graduate more than half of new nurses and health-care workers, and have a history of nimbleness and responsiveness to community needs, and can play a vital role in training for tomorrow’s jobs, over 60% of which will, in the next decade, require some college education. The first four chapters set the scene, demonstrating the key foundational linkage between education, community, and democracy, presenting a history of the community college movement, illustrating what’s involved in building strong and reciprocal community relationships, and covering a whole panoply of leadership issues such as governance, institutional culture, facilities planning, resource development, accreditation, and crisis management.The second part of the book presents Bob Pura’s accounts of his visits to five community colleges, each representing different geographic regions, institutional size, urban and rural locations, and how they respond to the varied racial and ethnic populations from they draw their students and establish themselves as anchors in their communities.As well as offering an important message to state and federal policy makers, this book serves as a roadmap for aspiring leaders of community colleges as well as a text for leadership and higher education courses. College leaders may find it useful for internal training and learning community groups.

Download or read book The Effects of Institutional Factors on the Success of Community College Students written by Thomas Bailey and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 60 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The goal of this report is to measure the institutional characteristics that affect the success of community college students, particularly low-income and minority students. While there is a growing literature on this topic for baccalaureate institutions, few researchers have attempted to address the issue for community colleges. Since this line of research is so new, there remain open many methodological and conceptual issues. Much research has been done to identify individual student characteristics that impact their outcomes at community colleges. Characteristics such as academic preparedness, household income, parents? level of education, gender, race/ethnicity, and patterns of enrollment have all been found to impact individual student outcomes. Yet, individual factors cannot completely explain the graduation rates of different community colleges, or even the likelihood of an individual student completing at a particular college. Evidence shows that different community colleges enrolling essentially similar types of students may have vastly different graduation rates. What characteristics of these institutions might play a role in explaining student outcomes, when controlling for student characteristics? This report investigates that question using different models and sets of data. This report focuses on policies and programs that colleges themselves might be able to implement to improve student success. Even though community colleges are similar types of institutions on many levels, there is wide variation among colleges in various student outcome measures such as graduation, transfer, and retention. The central premise of this report and the broader research program, of which the report is one component, is that there are important lessons and insights that can be learned from this variation. Appended are: (1) Institutional Graduation Rates Regression Tables; (2) Individual Outcomes Models; and (3) Individual Outcomes Regression Tables. [Report produced byearch Center.].

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 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 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 116 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 The American Community College written by Arthur M. Cohen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-08-27 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For more than thirty years, The American Community College has been the go-to reference for faculty, administrators, trustees, state-level officials, and researchers concerned with the role of community colleges in the American educational system, the services they provide, and their effects on students and surrounding communities. Now in its sixth edition, The American Community College includes a new chapter on student outcomes and accountability; a case for reconceptualizing general education around critical thinking, civic engagement, and sustainable development; and an appendix examining the ascendant for-profit sector. The sixth edition also incorporates expanded analyses of recent trends within the community colleges, including vertical expansion; cross-sector collaboration; student and faculty characteristics; enrollment patterns; revenue generation and state allocation patterns, including performance-based funding; distance learning; and statewide efforts to improve transfer and articulation. In addition, the authors include a response to contemporary criticisms of the institution. Comprehensive in scope, the sixth edition of The American Community College is designed for anyone concerned with the role and purpose of community institutions in American higher education. The descriptions and analyses of each of the institution’s functions can be used by administrators who want to learn about practices that have proven successful at other colleges, curriculum planners involved in program revisions, faculty members seeking ideas for modifying their courses, students preparing for careers in community colleges, and trustees and officials concerned with college policies and student progress and outcomes. Each chapter of the book includes guiding questions for reflection and discussion.

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 Is Student Success Labeled Institutional Failure written by Thomas Bailey and published by . This book was released on 2005 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community colleges are open-door institutions serving many students with academic, economic, and personal characteristics that can make college completion a challenge. Their graduation rates are low, but community college students do not always have earning a degree as their goal. While individual students may feel that their experience at a community college is a success, unless it culminates in a credential or transfer to a four-year institution the enrollment is counted as a failure for the college. This report explores different views on whether graduation rates are a fair and valid measure of community college effectiveness. It indicates how these rates can be useful as a relative measure and as a guide for institutional improvement, and suggests other ways of measuring student and institutional success. (Contains 13 figures.).

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 After Admission written by James E. Rosenbaum and published by Russell Sage Foundation. This book was released on 2007-01-04 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Enrollment at America's community colleges has exploded in recent years, with five times as many entering students today as in 1965. However, most community college students do not graduate; many earn no credits and may leave school with no more advantages in the labor market than if they had never attended. Experts disagree over the reason for community colleges' mixed record. Is it that the students in these schools are under-prepared and ill-equipped for the academic rigors of college? Are the colleges themselves not adapting to keep up with the needs of the new kinds of students they are enrolling? In After Admission, James Rosenbaum, Regina Deil-Amen, and Ann Person weigh in on this debate with a close look at this important trend in American higher education. After Admission compares community colleges with private occupational colleges that offer accredited associates degrees. The authors examine how these different types of institutions reach out to students, teach them social and cultural skills valued in the labor market, and encourage them to complete a degree. Rosenbaum, Deil-Amen, and Person find that community colleges are suffering from a kind of identity crisis as they face the inherent complexities of guiding their students towards four-year colleges or to providing them with vocational skills to support a move directly into the labor market. This confusion creates administrative difficulties and problems allocating resources. However, these contradictions do not have to pose problems for students. After Admission shows that when colleges present students with clear pathways, students can effectively navigate the system in a way that fits their needs. The occupational colleges the authors studied employed close monitoring of student progress, regular meetings with advisors and peer cohorts, and structured plans for helping students meet career goals in a timely fashion. These procedures helped keep students on track and, the authors suggest, could have the same effect if implemented at community colleges. As college access grows in America, institutions must adapt to meet the needs of a new generation of students. After Admission highlights organizational innovations that can help guide students more effectively through higher education.

Download or read book The College Fear Factor written by Rebecca D. Cox and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-02-15 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: They’re not the students strolling across the bucolic liberal arts campuses where their grandfathers played football. They are first-generation college students—children of immigrants and blue-collar workers—who know that their hopes for success hinge on a degree. But college is expensive, unfamiliar, and intimidating. Inexperienced students expect tough classes and demanding, remote faculty. They may not know what an assignment means, what a score indicates, or that a single grade is not a definitive measure of ability. And they certainly don’t feel entitled to be there. They do not presume success, and if they have a problem, they don’t expect to receive help or even a second chance. Rebecca D. Cox draws on five years of interviews and observations at community colleges. She shows how students and their instructors misunderstand and ultimately fail one another, despite good intentions. Most memorably, she describes how easily students can feel defeated—by their real-world responsibilities and by the demands of college—and come to conclude that they just don’t belong there after all. Eye-opening even for experienced faculty and administrators, The College Fear Factor reveals how the traditional college culture can actually pose obstacles to students’ success, and suggests strategies for effectively explaining academic expectations.

Download or read book Global Adaptations of Community College Infrastructure written by Gaulee, Uttam and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2018-09-07 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Community colleges in America have evolved a great deal from the establishment of the first community college in Chicago 117 years ago. The idea of American community colleges serves as a catalyst for connective solutions between industry, college, and the community on a global level. Global Adaptations of Community College Infrastructure provides emerging research on various contextual adaptations of the idea of the American community college as a connective solution to engaging community and industry. This research will help any nation or state forge policies on adapting the concept toward democratization of economic opportunities for all individuals as opposed to the current elitist system of higher education. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as diploma pathway programs and the development of education institutions in various countries, this book is ideally designed for academicians, economic and educational policymakers, higher education professionals, and individuals engaged in expansion and democratization of post-secondary education worldwide.

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.