The intent of this study is to explore the actions and strategies used by the administration at Bergen Community College to serve its institutional mission in increasing student completion. Facing challenges in low completion rate, Bergen Community College began the student completion initiative to develop a strategy that would best serve the…

This chapter acknowledges the contextual considerations in preparation and success in higher education and establishes a foundation of knowledge for researchers, educators, and practitioners to support foster youth in community college settings.

This chapter describes the challenges and opportunities associated with creating sophisticated support networks designed to support youth experiencing homelessness. The authors offer an overview of programs and policies that is interwoven with the story of Susan, a composite of youth with whom they have worked, to illustrate the ways Virginia is…

State fiscal support for higher education has met sluggish growth recently, a trend that has community college leaders working to meet student needs despite a shrinking resource pool. According to an annual report released in January by Grapevine, state financial aid for higher education increased just 1.6 percent between the 2017 and 2018 fiscal…

One way administrators and policy makers have responded to the complexity of the community college transfer process has been to create articulation agreements between two-year and four-year colleges in a state or region. Our study examines the effects of one such statewide articulation and transfer policy, the Ohio transfer module (TM). This…

Students' decisions to enter or persist in STEM courses is linked with their affective domain. The influence of factors impacting students' affective domain in introductory college chemistry classes, such as attitude, is often overlooked by instructors, who instead focus on students' mathematical abilities as sole predictors of academic…

First-generation minority students embark upon the community college campus in large numbers yet persistence to degree completion is waning, specifically for African Americans. The downward spiral has far-reaching implications in the job market, socioeconomic attainment, and community development. The purpose of this study was to examine the role…

Perhaps if we had a better understanding between the relationships among indicators of success in college, college student self-efficacy and participation in programs that help students succeed in college, we could improve success rates and persistence in post-secondary education. This mixed methods study sheds light on the relationship among…

This qualitative case study examined the process Northcentral Technical College (NTC), a two-year institution, navigated to design and implement a standardized prior learning assessment (PLA) program. With the projected labor market shortage, PLA is one strategy colleges have been recommended to use to provide the opportunity for students to apply…

According to "The Future of Undergraduate Education" report, about 17 million students are enrolled in 4,700 college and university programs every fall. Forty-nine percent of all credentials earned are bachelor's degrees, 26 percent are associate degrees and another 25 percent are certificates. In the U.S., students can tap several…

Traditional developmental mathematics sequences are a major impediment for community college students who need to acquire college-level mathematics credit in order to attain their long-term academic goals. Each year, approximately 500,000 students fail to complete their developmental mathematics coursework, jeopardizing their ability to earn an…

Student veterans transition from military to college learning environments, which may require them to cope with the changes they come across, whether those changes are in themselves or in their environment. The problem addressed by this study was how student veterans experience and cope with the transition from military education to civilian…

"Student success" is a term that has gained a lot of notoriety within higher education discourse. As measured by the graduation rates that institutions of higher education are required to report on an annual basis, one chapter of the story on how well students and colleges are doing on the college completion agenda is revealed. As…

Colleges and universities have begun implementing mentoring programs to offset rising attrition rates; however, the literature on the benefits of these programs is limited particularly among community colleges with peer mentoring programs serving minority students. Further limiting our understanding of post-secondary peer mentoring programs is the…

This study aims to evaluate the transfer process of the high achieving student who participates in and graduates from a community college Honors Program. By using quantitative data, the analysis determined whether or not specialized honors programming for the high achieving student allowed the student to complete an associate degree in less time,…