Traditionally colleges have relied on standalone non-credit-bearing developmental education (DE) to support students academically and ensure readiness for college-level courses. As emerging evidence has raised concerns about the effectiveness of DE courses, colleges and states have been experimenting with approaches that place students into…

Latent trajectories of credit hour accumulation were modeled using three independent samples of community college students. Five qualitatively distinct patterns of persistence emerged from these samples: Full-time, long-term; 2 years and out; long-term decliners; part-time, long-term; and one term and out. Follow-up analyses using measures on the…

We use data from the 1990/1994 Beginning Post-Secondary Survey to determine whether the factors associated with long-term attrition from higher education differ for students who initially enrolled part-time as compared to for students who initially enrolled full-time. Using a two-stage sequential decision model to analyze the initial enrollment…

Existing applications of event history modeling in attrition research typically focused on the first departure. This study extends the scope of existing applications by dividing each student's enrollment history into periods of enrollment and non-enrollment (spells). The findings indicate that departure is strongly associated with poor college…

Over the last decade, policymakers, educators, and researchers have increasingly sought to understand community college policies and practices that promote students' success. This effort has been partly driven by an increased emphasis on outcome accountability, but it has also promoted a productive discussion about improving institutional…