Minority-serving institutions (MSIs) are considered models of excellence to support underrepresented racial and ethnic students; however, multiple definitions of MSIs complicate the consumption and production of research on these critical institutions. The U.S. Department of Education (ED) uses set criteria to define MSIs, based primarily on…

Fall-to-fall retention and persistence are important early indicators for students working toward degrees and certificates. Data examined by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center indicated that the overall rate for students who began at a community college in fall 2016 and persisted the next fall (enrolled in the same college or…

The COVID-19 Transfer, Mobility, and Progress report series aims to identify the ways in which the pandemic is changing transfer pathways across higher education. The pandemic's impacts on transfer enrollment shifted as the pandemic progressed, with transfer pathways and student groups showing diverging patterns over time. As the ninth issue in…

Transfer from California's community colleges to its public universities has long been central to the state's higher education system. Though most of the 2.2 million community college students intend to transfer, fewer than half do so within six years of their initial enrollment. A low transfer rate is bad news for California. The state's economy…

Southeast Asian American (SEAA) (e.g., Cambodian, Hmong, Lao, and Vietnamese) students' educational realities are often masked by assumptions that all Asian Americans are model minorities. However, SEAA students have also been racialized as deviant minorities to explain disparities faced by the community. Relatively minimal scholarship has…

The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine institutional actions that influence service use among SEAA community college students. More specifically, this study investigated the effects of access to services (service access), validating staff members (staff validation), and caring staff members (staff care) on the use of campus services…

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in the highest unemployment that the U.S. has seen since the Great Depression, with particularly heavy job losses for Black, Hispanic, and Native American workers. In this set of studies commissioned by Lumina Foundation, the authors examine actions that states and community colleges can take to address the needs of…

There is currently a dearth of literature on Asia Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in post-secondary education. Given this, there is a need for research to counter the stereotypes that cast an invisible barrier to the experiences of this population in higher education. This is particularly true for AAPI men in community college. The purpose…

Asian Americans are generally considered an educationally and economically successful minority in the United States, a perception known as the model minority myth. These images can negatively impact Asian Americans, especially in higher education, by neglecting their challenges and limiting the research conducted related to their struggles and…

Many programs and practices aim to improve college persistence and completion, including "Single Stop USA's Community College Initiative," hereafter referred to as "Single Stop." "Single Stop" supports community college students with screening and applications for public benefits and other wraparound services that can…

This article provides a portrait of the challenges and promise of Latino schooling in California's agricultural Central Valley, site of one of the largest and socioeconomically vulnerable Latino populations in the nation's most populous state. Through surveys, interviews, and participant observation, we document a multi-year "Placed-Based…

As community colleges across the country implement large-scale reforms to improve student success, they need timely and actionable metrics to determine if the changes they are making in a given year or term will likely improve student outcomes in the long run. In this brief, the authors examine how well nine measures of students' progress in their…

Contrary to the model minority myth that portrays Asian Americans as academic all-stars overrepresented in elite 4-year institutions, nearly half of all Asian American college students do, in fact, attend community colleges, and many experience myriad challenges. This exploratory study utilized a qualitative analysis and investigated how model…

This issue of "DataPoints" shows the distribution of STEM certificates and associate degrees by race-ethnicity, 2016-17. Many community colleges are working to increase diversity among students in STEM fields, including participation in programs such as the National Science Foundation's Advanced Technological Education program and other…

Many programs and practices aim to improve college persistence and completion, including "Single Stop USA's Community College Initiative," hereafter referred to as "Single Stop." "Single Stop" supports community college students with screening and applications for public benefits and other wraparound services that can…