Although academic success among diverse community college students requires effective reading skills, providing support for struggling readers is becoming increasingly more difficult. The problem addressed in this quantitative study was that due to Assembly Bill 705, prohibiting colleges from offering remedial courses without data to substantiate…

With the quick rise of social media's popularity among the young, colleges and universities have found ways to use social media to recruit prospective students, engage current students, and connect with former ones. The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of social media use for varied purposes among a student population often…

Predictive analytics are increasingly pervasive in higher education. However, algorithmic bias has the potential to reinforce racial inequities in postsecondary success. We provide a comprehensive and translational investigation of algorithmic bias in two separate prediction models--one predicting course completion, the second predicting degree…

Purpose: Supporting community college transfer students represents a critical strategy for broadening participation in STEM. In addition to being a racially diverse group, students who pursue STEM degrees by way of community college report frequent interests in graduate study and academic careers. Thus, supporting and expanding transfer students'…

This study investigated the predicted outcome value of electronic communication from the viewpoint of developmental mathematics students. Students at a large Texas community college completed a combination of instruments that were administered in three prior studies. Three reasons for using electronic communication that were included in this study…

Learning about evolution is a foundational part of biology education, but most current studies that explore college student evolution education are conducted at universities. However, community college students tend to be more diverse in characteristics shown to be related to evolution education outcomes. To explore how studies involving…

The study of sense of belonging in college among community college students has been limited in the literature. This cross-sectional quantitative study sought to address that gap by identifying factors that influenced community college students' sense of belonging in college at eight Ohio community colleges through an electronic questionnaire…

Adequacy of funding for public institutions of higher education in the United States is significantly important to an array of stakeholders, including, state legislative bodies, decision-makers in the arena of higher education, and notably, consumers of higher education. State allocation of resources for higher education demonstrates variability,…

In this dissertation, I present an examination of the economics of education through three chapters. In the first paper, I study the overrepresentation of elite university graduates in senior positions in public administration. Using rich administrative data from Chile, I employ a stacked fuzzy regression discontinuity design to estimate the…

Math self-efficacy has been shown to predict math achievement and interest in a math-related career, such as one in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). However, women consistently report lower math self-efficacy than men, contributing to gender disparities in upper-level math courses and the underrepresentation of women in…

An estimated 1,400 colleges and universities nationwide have invested in predictive analytics technology to identify which students are at risk of failing courses or dropping out, with spending estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars. How accurate and stable are those predictions? The authors put six predictive models to the test to gain…

This causal comparative study examined group differences in college readiness using the "Redefining Ready" college readiness indicators for rural community college students. Additional analysis focused on evidence supporting a high school experience, or combination of high school experiences, that most accurately correlates with academic…

This study aimed to understand the identity and attitude of students enrolled in computer science (CS) or programming-related course at community colleges nationwide. This study quantitatively evaluation data for estimating the relationships between students' identity and attitudes toward computer science with prior programming experience and…

States and broad-access colleges are rapidly scaling corequisite coursework--a model where students concurrently enroll in college-level and developmental coursework--in response to dismal completion rates in traditional "developmental" sequences. At community colleges, evidence suggests that corequisite reforms can dramatically improve…

This report examines the success of students with lower levels of high school performance who began in transfer-level math as a result of Assembly Bill 705 (Irwin 2017). AB 705 is historic legislation that transformed placement and eventually ended developmental education in California's community colleges. Since community colleges are open access…