The student retention behavior of stopping-out is widely misunderstood and yet very important in explaining community college student enrollment patterns. Stopping-out remains understudied in higher education literature as it is challenging to collect data from students who discontinued their enrollment, and since these students are not retained,…

Community college students' success in required gateway courses plays a key role in their academic progress toward credential completion. Focusing on students who earned a D, F, or W grade in their first attempt at a required gateway course, this study investigated if students' initial attempt course modality is related to their later choice to…

Students who leave school early is an issue of global concern, and various measures have been taken to help early leavers return to school, including second chance education programmes. This qualitative case study explores their reasons for continuing education in a second chance education programme in a successful educational centre located in…

The COVID-19 pandemic decreased college enrollment and disrupted academic progress, particularly among disadvantaged students and institutions. Just before the start of the pandemic in spring 2020, 31,511 undergraduate students attending colleges of The City University of New York responded to a survey detailing their circumstances. Lasso…

Across Tennessee, more than 595,000 working-age adults have earned college credit but do not have a postsecondary credential. In response to the growing economic demands over the past decade, many states launched efforts to re-engage students with some college but no degree (SCND). In 2018, Tennessee launched "Tennessee Reconnect," a…

While domestic student-international student interactions have received attention in the literature as a means of advancing internationalization at home (IaH), the potential contributions of domestic students who return from international educational experiences (IEEs) have been noted but remain largely unexplored. This article seeks to initiate a…

Most students who begin at a community college do not complete their desired credential. Many former students fail to graduate due to various barriers rather than their academic performance. To encourage previously successful non-completers to re-enroll and eventually graduate, a growing number of community colleges have implemented re-enrollment…

While much research on student success has been conducted on retention, attrition and college completion among those that voluntarily withdraw from college, few studies have focused on involuntary withdrawal in the form of academic dismissal. More importantly, even less scholarship has been devoted to the subsequent restoration of academic…

In 2017, the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning (IHL) and the Mississippi Community College Board (MCCB) adopted a program developed in 2010 by the National Governors Association titled Complete 2 Compete (C2C). The C2C program was created to combat the disparities in educational attainment and to meet the demand for a more educated…

Overview: This study examines the complex effects on families when mothers reenroll in school at any level. The population of mothers in school--especially in college--is large and predominantly composed of women of color (Reichlin Cruse et al. 2019; Anderson 2022). Though there is a mounting emphasis on increased education and skills in the…

Each year, hundreds of thousands of students leave higher education without earning their degree. Helping these students return and complete their degree is an enormous opportunity for higher education to propel social and economic mobility for students and their broader communities. With limited resources at postsecondary institutions, however,…

Objective: This quantitative study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' persistence at a minority-serving, open-access, public, urban community college in New York City. Specifically, the project looked at factors associated with mid-semester college withdrawals during spring 2020 when the college shifted to remote instruction…

This brief examines enrollment patterns, demographics, education patterns, and financial aid use for Minnesota undergraduate students who are adult learners. The analysis also explores the changes in those patterns and characteristics as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. For purposes of this brief, the differing characteristics of two important…

The new majority of college students have adult responsibilities, such as parenting, earning a living, and paying for college. Unfortunately, adult students are often treated as an afterthought by colleges and policymakers. Over the last 20 years, more than 37 million students have left without receiving a degree that would greatly improve their…

Background: Professionals who pursue a doctorate after significant post-baccalaureate work experience, a group we refer to as returners, represent an important but understudied group of engineering doctoral students. Returners are well situated to leverage their applied work experiences in their advanced engineering training. Purpose/Hypothesis:…