The U.S. college-going population has diversified significantly in the past five decades. That fact, combined with a large community college capacity, an increased need for highly skilled workers, and the knowledge that higher education means social and economic mobility, makes improving student success at community colleges essential. All 116…

Calls for greater equity are ubiquitous in higher education policy, both at the state and institutional level. The California College Promise and the local programs through which its benefit of tuition-free community college is accessed, are part of this trend, making it critically important to understand how equity is framed, understood, and…

This resource provides step-by-step guidance to teams who are developing, strengthening, or expanding a College Promise program. The Guidebook is organized into three sections that cover topics ranging from how to frame your College Promise program to evaluating and implementing it. Each section includes embedded tools and exercises to help you…

The book analyses and evaluates several key community college reform programs that emerged after the Recession of 2008 and as a result of major initiatives in California, New York, Tennessee, Florida, Connecticut and Wisconsin. Because of the economic downturn in the early 21st Century, an already eroding financial base for public higher education…

The California College Promise Policy brief outlines the policy landscape that helped fuel the growth of College Promise in California. It reflects on issues that have arisen as the state's College Promise legislation and reforms have been implemented, and offers recommendations for maximizing the equity and impact of the California model of…

Community colleges play a critical role in providing access to higher education for over two million Californians seeking an educational foundation that will prepare them to transfer to a four-year university or to participate in the workforce. However, community colleges have not always delivered on that promise--fewer than half of students who…

College Promise programs are thriving in California, and with the continued growth comes a need to understand the features of these diverse efforts and the perspectives of the communities in which they exist. In 2018, the James Irvine Foundation supported California College Promise Project (CCPP) at WestEd to study the College Promise landscape in…

Creating a collaborative environment across student services and instruction is often more challenging than it may first seem. Although effective collaboration is context specific, keeping student learning at the center of the work is a powerful element in successful collaborations. Grossmont College's first year experience program has attempted…

Through a one year-long, qualitative study of welfare-to-work students, this study investigates the developing epistemologies of women enrolled in a community college CalWORKs program. We investigate how poverty as a macro-environment and the community college as a micro-environment influence participants' epistemological development. Findings…

The lasting sense of connection that a graduate feels for his or her alma mater is often rooted in those especially memorable aspects of the college experience--the times spent bonding with friends and faculty, practicing and playing on athletic teams, collaborating with professors on research, and serving as leaders in student government. Such…

In 2008, University of California, San Diego (UCSD) joined the ranks of institutions offering Global Seminars, short-term study abroad programs designed and led by the institution's own faculty. In this model, an instructor teaches two courses in his or her area of expertise and guides students through a city or other location abroad for five…

Learning communities have increasingly become a mechanism for education reform in elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education. Recognizing that learning occurs both inside and outside the classroom, their emergence is partly a response to the critique that undergraduate education at American research universities lacks integrated and…

In this paper, the authors draw on empirical data from CCRC's Scaling Innovation project to examine trends in developmental education instructional reform and outline a framework for reform adoption and adaptation. The paper's findings are based on two qualitative data sources: a scan of developmental education reforms that involved changes to…

Engineering education directly supports the nation's capacity for economic growth, infrastructure renewal, and security, as well as environmental and human health. Numerous reports have recommended federal support to advance our understanding of how students learn, how faculty teach, and how teaching and learning are assessed. The U.S. National…

Online education continues to permeate mainstream teaching techniques in higher education settings. Teaching upper-level classes in an online setting is having a major impact on education as a whole and is fundamentally altering global learning. "Cases on Critical and Qualitative Perspectives in Online Higher Education" offers a…