In this study, I draw on Bahr's ("Research in Higher Education" 51:724-749, 2010; New Directions for Institutional Research S1:33-48, 2011) behavioral typology of first-time community college students to examine college-level variation in students' patterns of use of 105 community colleges in California. I find that students' patterns of…

How can it be that 50 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, our institutions of higher education have still not found ways of reducing the higher education gaps for racial and ethnic groups? That is the question that informs and animates the Equity Scorecard model of organizational change. It shifts institutions' focus from what…

The NEAIR (North East Association for Institutional Research) 2012 Conference Proceedings is a compilation of papers presented at the Bethesda, Maryland conference. Papers in this document include: (1) Can a Marketing Campaign Increase Response Rates to Online Course Evaluations? (Kimberly Puhala); (2) Developing Community College Peer…

This biennial survey, issued to all New Jersey postsecondary institutions, provides the Commission on Higher Education with current information about both the population of college students with disabilities in the state as well as the extent to which this population is served by the state-funded regional centers. New for Fall 2008, the Commission…

This chapter presents a sophisticated approach for tracking student cohorts from entry through departure within an institution. It describes how a researcher can create a student tracking model to perform longitudinal research on student cohorts. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

This chapter describes several examples of institutional use of state- and college-level tracking data to benchmark performance, improve student success, and enhance program effectiveness.

This chapter describes the National Student Clearinghouse and discusses opportunities and challenges for tracking community college students. It also presents a system perspective on using clearinghouse data to promote more comprehensive student and graduate tracking. (Contains 2 tables.)

Asera assesses the challenges that community colleges face in educating students in basic skills. For a significant group of college students the seemingly automatic skills of literacy and numeracy have become opaque, creating a particular challenge for community colleges, 98 percent of which offer at least one remedial reading, writing or…

This chapter examines lessons learned by states that are using student unit record (SUR) data to improve outcomes for community college students and recommends steps states can take to strengthen their use of SUR databases to benefit students and communities. (Contains 1 exhibit.)

A report that describes some of the characteristics of Harford Community College students is summarized. The 12 variables investigated in order to develop a description of the student population and pinpoint trends were: (1) part-time students--the proportion of part-time students was found to be rising dramatically; (2) Age--the average age of…

In the fall of 1971, a survey instrument calling for respondents to give basic data about themselves (race, sex, age), to indicate their educational status (class in college), to report their long-range educational plans, and to give other related information was administered to entering students in the public junior colleges and community…

Conducted as part of a continuing effort to understand the nature of persistence and withdrawal at Southwestern College, this study focused on the student who signs up for classes, is active on the census date, but completely withdraws from school before the end of the semester. The study provides the following: (1) the descriptive statistics, the…

To understand student attrition, Mercer County Community College has developed a complementary information system based on: (1) a computerized tracking system following enrollment patterns by semester of entering class; (2) surveys of the nonreturning student populations each semester; and (3) retrieval of demographic and biographic…

In a longitudinal study of student performance at Harper College, a sample of full-time and part-time students who enrolled at the college in the fall semesters during the years 1967 through 1972 was studied. The results of the study showed that in 1969 and 1970 more students were leaving before they accumulated 15 hours credit, and fewer were…

As part of a statewide followup study of all students who entered a community college in the fall of 1970, a questionnaire was mailed in April 1974 to the 3,615 students who had entered Montgomery Community College in fall 1970. Twenty percent of the questionnaires were nondeliverable; thus, 2,890 students received the questionnaire, and of these,…