The United States faces an unprecedented mental health crisis, with youth and young adults at the center. Even before the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, nearly 50 percent of college students reported at least one mental health concern. Without adequate mental health support, college students, including those at community colleges,…

Developmental English in urban-serving community colleges was considered as the site where racial and ethnic minority students who are deemed underprepared for college must learn the white, middle-class literacy conventions valued in higher education. The idea of symbolic violence--the systematic devaluation of one's culture--was used as a…

This brief raises the issue of how community colleges that are predominately white struggle with creating warm and welcoming campus environments to engage and equitably meet the cultural needs of their diverse learners, particularly for students who hold racially minoritized identities due to systems of oppression. Moving from integration to…

The mission of community colleges is to create affordable pathways for students to enter the workforce or transfer into 4-year universities. However, community colleges have not been successful in efforts to assist Students of Color in completing an associate degree or transferring. Therefore, efforts have been made to increase the number of…

The purpose of this study was to understand how Puente Project community college faculty experience and conceptualize carino in the Puente Summer Institute training context and how carino is enacted with students. In this research, I used a grounded theory approach informed by culturally relevant and carino pedagogies as conceptual frameworks to…

Only 11% of community college (associate's-degree) students transfer vertically and obtain a bachelor's degree within six years, despite over 80% originally intending to do so. These leaks in the transfer pipeline disproportionately affect students from underrepresented groups, who are more likely to attend community colleges and to leak out of…

"Dismantling Dire Disparities: A Closer Look at Racially Inequitable Funding at Public Four-Year Colleges and Universities" examines funding and resource patterns from the Great Recession to the peak of the economic recovery (2006 to 2018), and takes a deep dive into the public four-year colleges that disproportionately enroll and…

Across the country, students are unwittingly leaving postsecondary credentials on the table without institutions awarding the associate degrees they have earned. A disproportionate number of those students are from populations that have been historically excluded from or overlooked in higher education, including Black, Latinx, Indigenous students,…

Equity practices have expanded throughout the California community college (CCC) system. Every CCC develops an equity plan, where each institution chooses a disproportionately impacted population and focuses on improving access, basic skills completion, degrees and certificates awarded, and transfer rates. Each college is required to develop…

Community colleges have a long history of providing entrance to higher education to minority students who enroll in these institutions underprepared and deprived of basic needs. With limited resources, community college leaders are expected to assist students in academic pursuits. The Center for Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (Center for EDI)…

This exploratory, phenomenological study explored how rural community college students perceived barriers from the transfer process and the support services they had needed for their successful transfers to 4-year universities in rural Texas. Transfer shock and transfer student capital were the two frameworks employed to model sampled students'…

Background/Context: The Holistic Oasis for Parents' Education (HOPE) Program is an on-campus summer program designed to serve the whole student with a three-dimensional support model. Low-income, Black, and Hispanic parents experienced some of the most egregious effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, which reflects the demographics of one in three…

This study aimed to synthesize and critically analyze 24 empirical studies that focused on Students of Color (SOC) in Integrated Reading and Writing (IRW) classrooms in U.S. community colleges. Our review, through the cultural and community practices framing, examined IRW studies and how SOC, curriculum/institutional reform, and wise pedagogical…

This Equity Alert discusses why goal setting matters for improving how colleges serve students of color and low-income students, and it shares guiding principles advocates can use to help ensure each college's goals: (1) are accessible and transparent to all stakeholders; (2) focus on closing equity gaps; (3) have engaged their community and…

Previous studies about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and similarly-identified (LGBTQ+) college students have overwhelmingly centered White students and students attending four-year institutions. However, the literature suggests that community colleges -- which tend to enroll higher percentages of students from minoritized racial and…