This chapter describes community college STEM programs, including transfer-oriented science and engineering (S&E) programs and workforce-oriented technician programs, and the characteristics and educational pathways of the students who enroll in these programs.

The purpose of this study was to organize the identified risks into one of the five classifications in order to establish a taxonomy created by peers and to measure the variances in the level of risk at two-year colleges. A universal problem for colleges and universities is the difficulty of finding peer groups that have and are willing to share…

A college degree is vital to the economic and social well-being of the entire nation and its citizens. Yet, community colleges--which serve half of all students in higher education--have low graduation rates. Lack of academic preparation, competing personal and work demands, and economic stress make earning a degree difficult for many. As part of…

Student-parents compose a significant proportion of the student population at community colleges across the United States and Canada. The conflicting demands they face as they navigate academic, financial, and family responsibilities are considerable. Drawing on interviews with student-parents and administrators at two community colleges, we focus…

Textbook prices have increased exponentially in recent years, prompting educators to investigate the usefulness of alternative sources for course readings. This is particularly important for community college students who are more likely to be low-income and less likely to complete their educational credentials. Despite this need, there is a…

Objectives: In this study, we explore the influence of enrolling initially at a community college before transferring to a 4-year institution on the selectivity of the destination 4-year institution. Method: We leverage nationally representative data and a propensity score matching approach to compare the institutional selectivity between students…

Online learning has changed higher education, emerging as a primary source for delivering courses and programs to students. As online learning has grown, more non-traditional students have entered college, many for the first time. Consequently, many of these non-traditional are experiencing online learning, and the technologies that deliver them,…

Diverse learners are a key part of the student population in community colleges and many other educational settings. Culturally relevant pedagogy, incorporating varied cultural perspectives and tools in teaching practice, can result in a deeper knowledge of self and others. This teaching case presents the opportunity to consider applications of…

Since the fall of 2017, New York has offered free tuition to eligible residents attending its state-funded two-year and four-year colleges under its unique Excelsior Scholarship program. We use the difference-in-differences and generalized synthetic control estimators to document that institution-level enrollment effects are negligible. Our study…

This article reviews scholarship of incorporating institutional objectives in academic courses and proposes a method to embed mission-critical competencies in a library instruction course. Few academic institutions focus their mission or core competencies on digital communication. LaGuardia Community College delineates three competencies in its…

Past research suggests that some students are at risk of lower levels of academic performance when studying online compared to students who take coursework only in the classroom. Community college students appear to be among those that struggle in online settings. In this paper, we hypothesize that online course load may influence outcomes for…

This paper explores how students judge scientific news resources, as they might find through a Google search. The data were collected as part of an Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) funded project. Students used a simulated search engine that ensured study participants found the same search results while seeking information for a…

Objective: The process by which students decide to stay in college has been primarily based on models that are independent of geographic context. This article describes the local labor market in which community college students are situated and discusses the multiple and complex ways these labor markets impact student decisions to persist and…

More than half of community college students fail to meet college-readiness standards in math. Developmental education (dev-ed) aims to help students acquire the knowledge and skills to succeed in college-level math but is plagued with low rates of advancement. We examined the impact of a model that accelerates developmental math coursework so…

As the number of campus-sharing partnerships between two-year and four-year institutions increases, so will the need for academic and student affairs professionals to address some of the nuances that come with navigating these new environments. Such partnerships may create unique challenges for first-year students. Thus, this qualitative study…