Each year, a sizeable percentage of community college students enroll in remedial coursework to address skill deficiencies in math, writing, and/or reading. Unfortunately, the majority of these students do not attain college-level competency in the subjects in which they require remedial assistance. Moreover, students whose point of entry into the…

This ethnographic study focuses on a community college VESL program in the Pacific Northwest that attempts to address the critical employment needs of a growing number of English language learners (ELLs). Immigrants are routinely barred from mainstream career and technical programs because content is linguistically inaccessible. This college VESL…

The authors prepared this report after exploring programs using a 90-day cycle process borrowed from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). The IHI 90-day cycle scans activity in the field as a "quick way to research innovative ideas and assess their potential for advancing quality improvement". The goal was to "get under…

This paper provides the student statistics of the Community College League of California for the year 2010. These include: Per-Student Funding by Education System, 2009-10; Undergraduate Student Enrollment, 2008-09; Number of Student Transfers to Four-Year Public & Private Institutions, 2008-09; and Degrees and Certificates Awarded, 2008-09. …

This dissertation focuses on how rural community college students make decisions regarding their post-secondary plans. To understand these decision processes, I interviewed students, faculty and administrators at Southeast Community and Technical College in Harlan County, Kentucky. The literature informing my research reflects on rural college…

Institutional and student level data from the Florida Community Colleges were examined to explore the Retention Index of the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). A simple correlation and regression analysis was conducted to determine if the CCSSE Retention Index could be used to predict the institutional retention rate…

Recognition of the nontraditional student in higher education is valuable because it promotes an awareness of issues particularly relevant to the community college student population. While research that categorizes students by age is a practical way to study a unique population within community colleges, this approach may not be the most…

The present study investigated junior college students' conceptions of and approaches to learning via online peer assessment (PA) using a phenomenographic approach. Participants were 163 college students. Students were asked to accomplish a given learning task via an online PA system. Of the participants, 62 were interviewed after the activity.…

This study sought to identify the relationship between academic and social integration and persistence for veterans in two-year colleges. Bean and Metzner's (1985) attrition theory served as the theoretical background of investigation for including variables throughout the seven research questions. The Beginning Postsecondary Student survey…

Instructors in community college developmental education programs are constantly seeking new ways to improve outcomes for their students, but, to date, there has been a shortage of empirical studies on the effectiveness of such efforts. The current study provides evidence on the potential efficacy of an approach to helping students develop an…

Students in the United States are avoiding taking the higher level science courses in secondary and postsecondary academic institutions (Ball, 2000; Braund & Reiss, 2006; Lee & Frank, 1990). There are many careers that do not require students to take those higher level science courses; therefore, students avoid registering for those classes…

In this article, the authors report on an assessment project they recently conducted at their open admissions community college to assess student work at the end of the basic writing sequence. The authors' focus for this project was on the way students used essay structure. They gathered artifacts from students who were deemed "ready" by…

This article--the first in the Council for the Study of Community Colleges (CSCC) Review Essays Series--reviews the literature concerning education-abroad opportunities for community college students. The article examines the benefits accrued to students through overseas study, briefly notes the history of education-abroad programs, and summarizes…

Community colleges report opening Spring term opening enrollment figures to the Illinois Community College Board using a brief web based survey. This report contains information on student enrollments as of the end of registration -- usually the 10th day of the term -- for the Spring 2009 semester. Overall, statewide results of the fiscal year…

Because of the increasingly prominent role of foundations in supporting improved opportunities for community college students, it may be helpful to understand how foundations set priorities and make decisions. Some foundations engage in responsive grant making, whereby they outline priority areas and then respond to proposals received from the…