Over the past decade, educators and policymakers have sought to increase the number of students pursuing and completing postsecondary credentials. Community colleges play an important role in efforts to increase the percentage of Americans with postsecondary education. Community colleges play an important role in educating the early childhood…

Since 1998, the Iowa Department of Education's Division of Community Colleges and Workforce Preparation (division) has compiled and published "The Annual Condition of Iowa's Community Colleges," commonly known as the "Condition Report." The intent of this report is to provide clear, objective data about Iowa's community…

Using detailed administrative data from Virginia, this paper examines how and why the community college pathway to a baccalaureate influences students' degree attainment and short-term labor market performance. We find that the community college pathway sharply reduces the likelihood of earning a bachelor's degree but does not have a significant…

Business schools around the world are seeking partner relationships that will support the growing need for well-educated business professionals. The dilemma for many U.S. regional business schools is the trade-off between establishing international partnerships while ensuring educational integrity through quality assurance. This assurance can be…

Sheena Jackson, a high school student in Tampa, Florida, is part of a growing trend of young people who choose to go to community colleges with residential facilities as a bridge between living at home and getting an apartment or going to a four-year college. For some, community college is their first choice, and the two-year program fits their…

It is well established that students who begin post-secondary education at a community college are less likely to earn a bachelor's degree than otherwise similar undergraduates who begin at a 4-year school, but there is less consensus over the mechanisms generating this disparity. We explore these using national longitudinal transcript data and…

The North Dakota University System (NDUS) "2014-2015 Annual Enrollment Report" is an effort to report system wide, duplicated and unduplicated student headcount by combining degree credit and non-degree credit enrollments across the eleven NDUS institutions for an entire academic year. Additionally, non-credit enrollments provided…

The Rostrum is a quarterly publication of the Academic Senate for California Community Colleges. The following articles are included in this issue: (1) Effective Participation in Governance: Policies and Practices (Julie Bruno); (2) TOP Code Alignment Project and Impacts on Local Coding (Craig Rutan); (3) Focus on Transfer: ADTs, UCTP Degrees, and…

Student movement between institutions can no longer be deemed atypical. Approximately one-third of all students transfer during their college career and of those who transfer, 25% will transfer more than once. While movement from two-year to four-year institutions is still the most prevalent transfer pathway, it is important to note that 43% of…

This publication is the first of a series focusing on promising new ideas and innovative practices developed through the Adult College Completion Network. The brief addresses five topics of importance to those working to improve adult college completion: (1) Data availability particular to the returning adult population; (2) Partnerships between…

Articulation agreements were created to make transferring from a state-supported community college to a state-supported university a smoother process while reducing the higher education costs for the state. This ex-post facto study examined the relationship between the pathway North Carolina community college students used to complete the general…

Background: Education of nurses from a diploma to a degree is a global phenomenon. However, bridging is often seen as a "backdoor" route to becoming a Registered Nurse and very little evaluation data exists to challenge this notion. Objectives: This research project was undertaken to explore student characteristics, academic performance,…

Lower division preparation for the university has been an important mission of community colleges since their inception, creating an essential pathway to baccalaureate degree attainment for many students who may not have access to higher education. The transfer pathway is complex and often difficult for students to navigate. This study examined…

This paper uses qualitative and quantitative data to compare the outcomes of students at Chabot College who participated in an accelerated, one-semester developmental English course and their peers who participated in a two-semester sequence. The sample included first-time students who entered college between summer 1999 and fall 2010; students…

In this study academic outcomes for Associate of Applied Science and Associate of Applied Arts degree students who transferred to a large public midwestern research university were examined. A group with transcripted technical credits of 16 hours at transfer were compared and contrasted with a peer group of college-parallel associate's degree…