Education Code section 76002 requires the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office to prepare and submit a report each year on the number of special part-time and special full-time full-time equivalent students (FTES) claimed by each community college district for the preceding academic year in each of the following class categories: (1)…

Open-access colleges are an important pathway to economic mobility for millions of Americans. But graduation rates at these colleges are low--for example, only 36 percent of first-time, full-time freshmen at community colleges graduate within three years. Over the last two decades, MDRC and others have conducted research to build the evidence base…

A commonly used metric for measuring college costs, drawn from data in the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), is expenditure per full-time equivalent (FTE) student. This article discusses an error in this per FTE calculation when using IPEDS data, especially with regard to community colleges. The problem is that expenditures…

Community colleges and broad-access universities (those with minimally selective admissions policies) provide an opportunity for students across the United States to attain postsecondary degrees and economic mobility. However, graduation rates from such colleges are often low and there are many obstacles that can be difficult to overcome,…

Education Code section 76002 requires the California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office to prepare and submit a report each year on the number of full-time equivalent students (FTES) claimed by each community college district for special part-time and special full-time students for the preceding academic year in each of the following class…