The purpose of this study was to answer the research question: What effect does implementing state system wide curriculum in a large, urban, Midwestern two year technical/community college have on retention, graduation, and employment and how do faculty attitudes about state system wide curriculum influence this effect? This question was of…

Student engagement is a term that is loosely used throughout education and it is defined differently in the various stages of education. This study sought to find factors that predict student engagement for first-generation community college students using secondary data from the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). Using the…

Higher incidence of student under achievements and attrition rate continue to pose significant challenges for the organizational effectiveness of community colleges. Restructuring the classroom at each academic departmental level to better accommodate the needs of the students should be considered by community colleges as part of an institutional…

This report is the first in a series of current term enrollment estimates from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, to be published every December and May. It includes national enrollment estimates, as well as subtotals by institutional sector, enrollment intensity, age group, and gender. As of fall 2012, institutions actively…

Large numbers of students in California's 112 community colleges are struggling to pass college-level math classes, including courses they need to complete a degree or transfer to a four-year institution. Community college students' success in rigorous math is crucial to their futures and to any effort to improve college completion rates in…

During the last 20 years, there has been an increasing awareness that the U.S. is falling behind in its mathematics education of primary and secondary school students. For those who teach mathematics at the community college level, the deficiencies in mathematics education are painfully evident by the number of students requiring remedial math…

Two-year colleges in Japan have traditionally absorbed the major portion of female college entrants due to long-held gender stereotypes. Recently, Japanese women began to explore selfhood outside the traditional realm of marriage and motherhood. However, two-year colleges in Japan today continue to enroll mostly female students and few male…

The focus of this study was to examine four characteristics for successful and unsuccessful students enrolled in basic mathematics courses at a technical college. The characteristics, considered to be in part effects of human factors in engineering and design, examined the preferred learning styles, computer information systems competency,…

Interdisciplinary field study courses at 2-year colleges can provide an opportunity to enhance student learning. The authors present here an 11-day interdisciplinary field-study course designed for nonscience majors at a 2-year college. Using a theoretical learning framework that emphasizes cognitive and metacognitive gains, the field study…

Developmental mathematics is one of the most serious barriers to educational and economic achievement. Over 60 percent of all students entering community colleges in the United States are required to complete remedial/developmental courses as a first step towards earning associate's or bachelor's degrees. Then, to earn a degree,…

Having garnered national attention, high failure rates in developmental education present a significant barrier to state and national policymakers' goals of increasing the percentage of adults who earn a college credential. However, a majority of the research fails to consider why students place into developmental education. This piece examines a…

This mixed methods, phenomenological study examined how cultural tension influences career development for Asian American community college students. Students initially completed Phinney's (1992) Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure (MEIM) and an instrument developed for this study called the Cultural Identification Survey. The mean for ethnic…

For decades, remedial education has been extensively used in higher education and studied as an effective tool to help overcome the challenge of student unpreparedness. While previous studies on remedial education addressed the academic failure of students, this study focuses on academic success of African American females. This causal-comparative…

There are a large number of students entering college underprepared for college-level mathematics (Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, 2011). While this problem is not new, it has become the focus of national attention because of the impact it has on college completion and workforce development. There is much written in the…

Approximately 30% of students who persist to the end of their courses at two-year colleges do not do so with a passing grade, yet research on the educational experiences of these unsuccessful community college persisters remains limited. The purpose of this explanatory mixed-methods study was threefold. First, this study attempted to identify…