Student retention in higher education has focused on institutional holding power and exit prevention, leaving drop-out recovery efforts to high schools. Students in 2-year colleges exhibit noncontinuous enrollment patterns, demonstrating the need to examine both stop-out (those who return after a time-out) and stay-out (those who have not returned…

This qualitative study focuses on two cases studies, the perceptions of first and second-generation college graduates from a four-year public college who transferred from a two-year public college regarding family, social, institutional factors and influences during their collegiate experience. The first case study had one male and one female,…

Campus orientation and first year experience programs are becoming an everyday part of campus life at institutions across the country. One such program at Kirkwood Community College is College 101. College 101 is a semester long course designed to aid in the students' successful transition to Kirkwood academically, socially and personally. My…

Community colleges are a crucial channel for achieving postsecondary education success, especially for minority and nontraditionally aged students. Nonetheless, community colleges are inadequate to meeting national goals for postsecondary educational attainment. Most notably, the lack of a strong guidance of academic interventions stifles a…

Since 1998, the Iowa Department of Education's Division of Community Colleges and Workforce Preparation has compiled and published "The Annual Condition of Iowa's Community Colleges." This report is designed to help Iowans understand the challenges and opportunities community colleges face in providing quality programs to meet the…

Two-year colleges enroll many students every year that are not prepared for college level work. The purpose of this study was to determine what factors contribute to students needing to take remediation as well as what factors lead to successfully exiting developmental education. This study looked at students who began postsecondary education in…

Both the published tuition and fee prices of colleges and universities and the net prices students pay after subtracting grant aid and tax credits and deductions continued to rise between 2016-17 and 2017-18, even after adjusting for inflation. Average net prices in 2017-18 remain lower at public two-year and private nonprofit four-year…

Washington's community and technical colleges (CTCs) play an important role in producing baccalaureate degree graduates in the state through the applied baccalaureate (AB) degree. The key policy goals of the AB degree in Washington state are to increase educational attainment for students and meet employer demand. Compared to the traditional…

A quality education is the primary instrument of social and economic mobility in the United States. As open-access institutions, community colleges are the gateway to postsecondary education for millions of Americans. Many of these students would be unable to afford college without federal resources, such as student financial aid and tax credits.…

College instructors often teach scientific thinking by asking students to review and analyze a primary research article. The main purpose of this study was to explore how classroom response systems (CRS) could help impact the quality of written analysis papers submitted for this assignment by students taking 100-level biology courses at a…

The purpose of this study was to investigate Black male graduation rates in public two-year, degree-granting institutions. Specifically, the researchers were interested in determining the influence (if any) of select institutional characteristics (e.g., attendance intensity, degree of urbanization, geographic region, institutional size) on…

One fundamental aspect of engagement in higher education is faculty-student interaction (FSI). FSI has been associated with student success and persistence in both four- and two-year institutions. Due to limited research concerning diverse students, understanding student engagement in higher education is based on White, traditional-age students…

Using a framework of social and cultural capital, this study examined successful African American and Latina/o community college students. Based on focus group interviews with twenty two African American and Latina/o undergraduates at an urban community college, the authors reveal how social and cultural capital gained from students' relationships…

Background/Context: Community colleges are central to the United States' college completion goals. A popular strategy pushed by a number of influential policy organizations and foundations is a policy of tying state funding to community college completions, otherwise known simply as performance funding. This is happening despite little to no…

This study aimed at examining the impacts of high school track on college performance and subsequent occupational outcomes after college graduation. To this end, the Korean Education and Employment Panel (KEEP) data from 2004 through 2010, including 4,000 samples of 12th graders as of 2004 from vocational and general high schools, were analyzed.…