Publications

In CCRC's 2015 newsletter, Director Thomas Bailey argues for comprehensive reform using a guided pathways approach.

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.

Based on interviews with over 200 college personnel in Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee, this paper identifies and analyzes the deliberative structures used by colleges and universities to respond to performance funding demands.

Using matched college transcript and earnings data on over 80,000 students entering community college during the 2000s, this CAPSEE working paper examines the returns to math courses.

This chapter addresses structural systems reform and college completion, as well as the role of dual enrollment in ensuring equitable postsecondary outcomes.

Emerging early college models are providing opportunities for high school students to accrue college credits and experience themselves as successful ...

This report looks at the role of two-year Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) in improving postsecondary access and degree completion for disadvantaged students in the United States.

Using a novel method for linking non-completers with completers, this paper calculates the labor market returns to programs of study, accounting both for those who obtain an award and those who do not.

This research overview reviews findings on transfer from community colleges to four-year colleges, including student outcomes, barriers to transfer, the economic benefits of transfer, and potential benefits to four-year colleges.

This brief reviews what states can do to support public colleges and universities so they can effectively respond to the new demands placed on them by performance funding policies.

In this study, the authors examine medium-term returns to diplomas, certificates, and degrees for first-time college students who enrolled in the North Carolina Community College System in 2002–03.

This paper identifies and analyzes the types and numbers of unintended impacts—actual or potential—of state performance funding policies on higher education institutions in three states: Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee.

This paper examines the major obstacles that hinder higher education institutions from responding effectively to the demands of performance funding programs in three states: Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee.

This paper examines the ways that universities and community colleges in Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee have altered their policies, practices, and programs to respond to the demands of performance funding programs.

This study examines the primary policy instruments through which state performance funding systems influence higher education institutions in Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee.

This paper summarizes findings from a large study on the implementation and impacts of performance funding in three states that are regarded as leaders in that movement: Indiana, Ohio, and Tennessee.

This study provides one of the first estimates of the returns to different types of community college credentials across different fields of study.

This article provides an overview of sociology’s approach to understanding community colleges. It describes sociological theories and their contributions to the field and discusses recent debates on community colleges.

This study examines three developmental acceleration programs—two in English and one in math—and finds that accelerated students were more likely to complete the relevant college-level course within 3 years.

This chapter describes a promising approach to teaching developmental arithmetic and prealgebra and presents findings on a faculty support network that helped instructors adopt new teaching strategies.

This study examines how well students adapt to the online environment in terms of their ability to persist and earn strong grades in online courses relative to their ability to do so in face-to-face courses.

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 article reviews the forms, extent, origins, implementation, impacts (intended and unintended), and policy prospects of performance funding.

This paper introduces a model that uses transcript data matched to credit-level cost data and funding formulae to calculate the implications for efficiency of reforms intended to improve completion rates.

Using detailed data from three community colleges, the authors of this study employ the ingredients method to estimate the costs to colleges and students of remedial placement systems at community college.

Using the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002, this CAPSEE working paper evaluates the postsecondary and labor market outcomes of students who attended for-profit colleges.

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 uses administrative data and a rich predictive model to examine the accuracy of remedial screening tests, used either with or instead of high school transcript data to determine remedial assignment.

Based on CCRC’s Readiness for Technology Adoption framework, this self-assessment tool provides rubrics to help colleges identify issues that may need to be addressed to facilitate successful reform.

This study uses a difference-in-differences approach to identify the impact of ESL compared with developmental writing at an urban community college system.

This article uses economic, human, and cultural capital theories to frame and then describe access to undergraduate engineering degree programs and bachelor's degrees.

This practitioner packet aims to help colleges identify areas where students struggle due to complexity in the academic decision-making process and devise low-cost solutions.

This working paper presents a case study of how one large, suburban community college planned and implemented a relatively low-cost redesign of its student intake and information provision processes.

Based on interview data, this discussion paper explores whether faculty and college leaders are considering or undertaking reforms of developmental education informed by the Common Core State Standards.

This report presents a framework that identifies characteristics associated with colleges’ readiness to adopt technology-based reforms, emphasizing the need for both technological and cultural readiness.

In light of cost-cutting practices used by community colleges today, this article argues that the emphasis of policy and practice should be on improving efficiency: the cost per completion of a high-quality credential.

This paper compares the academic outcomes of students at Chabot College who participated in an accelerated, one-semester developmental English course and those who enrolled in a two-semester sequence.

This brief examines changes in entry-level college math enrollment and completion rates in Virginia's community colleges after the introduction of a new math placement test and placement policy.

In CCRC's 2014 newsletter, Director Thomas Bailey argues that comprehensive reform has the potential to move the needle on college completion.

Drawing on interviews with students, faculty, and staff at three community colleges, this paper aims to clarify the role of community college student and the behaviors that must be enacted for students to succeed.

This article discusses community college students’ experiences with online and face-to-face learning and implications for community colleges.

This paper estimates technical efficiency scores across the community college sector; it finds that the colleges have become more efficient over time but finds no evidence of economies of scale.

This journal article examines the impact of acceleration on access, performance, credit accumulation, and degree attainment at CUNY.

This practitioner packet provides tools to help community college administrators effectively implement reforms to developmental education at their colleges.

This issue of Inside Out identifies and explores the implications of three faculty orientations toward reform that consistently manifest when an innovation is introduced: ready to act, ambivalent, and reluctant to change.

This paper examines the political forces supporting the enactment of performance funding 2.0 programs—in which performance funding is embedded into base state funding for higher education—in three leading states.

This brief summarizes the research on the impacts of performance funding and suggests ways policymakers implementing performance funding programs can address obstacles and avoid unexpected outcomes.

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 paper argues that policymaking has been impaired by neglect of the fact that returns to college are high and by acceptance of the myth that the college affordability crisis is due to colleges' wasteful spending.

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.