Objective: Despite significant attention from federal and state policy makers, postsecondary completion rates in the United States remain stratified across race and socioeconomic background. This study examines a community-based college readiness program for underrepresented students from low-resource neighborhoods in Chicago, Illinois. Method:…

The purpose of this case study was to holistically investigate the environmental support needs of community college students as they transition into a research university. Both students and staff were interviewed to gain their perspective on the influences of the student transition process. Western University is a Carnegie classified Doctoral…

Many high school students enter college without the necessary reading, writing, and math skills and therefore must enroll in developmental courses (Barnett, 2018). To increase college readiness among entering students, one state encouraged community colleges to partner with local high schools to bring the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP), which…

In 2011, Washburn University of Topeka, Kansas was awarded a $19.6 million Round 1 TAACCCT grant through the Department of Labor to provide industry-relevant, hands-on training for high-demand, high-wage careers. The consortium, Technical Retraining to Achieve Credentials (TRAC-7), was led by Washburn University, and included seven Kansas…

Purpose: This research was intended to identify some of the factors that impact student veterans' well-being, based on their unmet needs. Research by the USC School of Social Work Center for innovation and Research on Veterans & Military Families USC-CIR (2015) found that many service members separate from the military ill-equipped to begin…

While many states have strengthened their high school graduation requirements over the last decade, too many graduates are still underprepared for college. In response to this problem, states across the country are administering early college readiness assessments that measure 11th grade students' readiness to successfully perform entry-level,…

Oakton Community College (Oakton) launched a Pathways to Results (PTR) project for the first time in 2014, a decision that converged with the launch of an all-college student success team with the goal of making evidence-based decisions to significantly improve student success. Oakton chose to work initially on its manufacturing program.…

Transfer from one institution to another is increasingly common for students during the course of their higher education careers. The number of students moving from community colleges to four-year universities continues to rise. Transfer students report experiences of alienation, isolation, and other personal and academic challenges. To address…

This study sought to understand how and why Northampton Community College's Summer Bridge program--The Smart Start program--is highly successful at helping "at-risk" students transition to college-level work. For ten years, the Smart Start program has helped more than 150 incoming students acclimate to college, persist, and graduate…

Community colleges have made great strides in advancing student success and completion during the last decade. But not all students have benefited from these efforts equally. According to the Lumina Foundation, the postsecondary attainment rate for adults in the United States is around 40 percent. Yet, there are still large gaps in attainment…

This appendix is a supplement to the report "Possible Ways of Increasing College Access Among Adults from Underserved Backgrounds: A Study of College Transition Text-Based Messaging." It provides additional information about the study of Text Ed--the messaging strategy evaluated for its ability to increase college enrollment and Free…

This two-year case study summarizes the views of students, instructors, and administrators toward a learning community program that served first-year developmental reading students at a public two-year college. One-on-one interviews and focus groups revealed that semester-long learning communities helped students overcome obstacles toward academic…

For several decades, institutions of higher education (IHE) have been addressing the need for postsecondary education (PSE) for students with intellectual disabilities (ID). These efforts have increased significantly since 2008 with passage of the Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA). The law includes a defined set of services and activities…

The purpose of this study was to identify the obstacles faced and strategies used to overcome those obstacles by undergraduate teacher education majors who began their coursework at a community college and completed an Associate of Arts in Teaching (AAT) degree in teacher education. In this study, the questions asked of the participants touched on…

The Linking Learning to Careers (LLC) program offered high school students with disabilities an individualized and targeted approach to strategically plan for their futures. The Vermont Division of Vocational Rehabilitation (DVR) designed LLC to build on its usual services for high school students to emphasize unpaid and paid work-based learning…