For many open-enrolled higher education institutions, including community colleges, enrollment is dropping each semester creating significant financial challenges. While much research literature focuses on four-year colleges, little is known about the students who seek to enroll at community colleges. What is known is often evaluated using college…

This study explored the college choice decisions for students who undermatched to a community college during their college choice process. Specifically, this project utilized a qualitative multi-site case study design to understand the college choice process for students who were admitted into a four-year institution but chose to enroll in a…

Recent efforts to increase college access and completion concentrate on reducing tuition rates at community colleges, but researchers and policy makers alike have expressed concern that such reductions may not lead to long-term gains in college completion. In this paper, I use detailed data on students' college enrollment and completion outcomes…

This report from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the To&Through Project examines two- and four-year college enrollment patterns among Chicago Public Schools (CPS) graduates over the last 10 years. CPS graduates' immediate college enrollment rates increased over the decade, with 63 percent of 2015 graduates enrolling…

Adult students (age 25 and older) make up almost 40 percent of the national undergraduate population. Since they are often balancing their college experience with work, family, and other responsibilities, adult students may have different priorities and challenges. What can campuses do to serve these students better and help more of them succeed?…

Recent federal and state education policy has targeted community colleges as an affordable venue to increase postsecondary attainment. We examined a state program aimed at increasing community college enrollment, the Missouri A+ Schools Program, which provided eligible graduates from participating high schools the opportunity to earn a scholarship…

Higher education has seen significant changes in the student experience in the past 10 years. For the past decade, everything from student attitudes about college to the technology they use every day has impacted their satisfaction with, and perception of, the college experience. This report is a comparison of student satisfaction, separated by 10…

Today a college degree is considered the ticket to a good job and the gateway to economic advancement. A student's chances of gaining admission to college, however, are often based more on parental wealth than the student's achievements. At the nation's most selective colleges, three percent of incoming freshmen come from families in the bottom…

As the economy sputters and outcry over the cost of college continues, more students keep enrolling--even if, in the past year, some have used campuses to protest their debt burden and what they see as other economic injustices. Enrollment has ticked up, but who goes to college and how they do it are changing. Students long dubbed…

The Ruffalo Noel Levitz (RNL) Satisfaction-Priorities Surveys are the national standard for benchmarking student satisfaction in higher education. Since 1994, more than 2,900 colleges and universities have used the surveys to evaluate students' concerns that influence student success, college completion, student recruitment, strategic planning,…

Hispanic students are significantly over-represented in community colleges compared to White and Black students. This paper uses a powerful but underutilized statistical technique, the Oaxaca decomposition, to explore the impact of social capital, as manifested through college financial information, on Hispanic student enrollment in 4-year and…

For more than two decades, the national standard for benchmarking student satisfaction in higher education has been the Ruffalo Noel Levitz Satisfaction-Priorities Surveys. Since their beginning in 1994, these benchmark surveys have been used by more than 2,900 U.S. colleges and universities to evaluate students' concerns that correspond with…

Community colleges offer students an alternate pathway for baccalaureate degree attainment. Statistical data has shown that degree-seeking students can use community colleges to facilitate transfer to four-year institutions. Transfer rates from community colleges to four-year institutions are between 25% and 40%. Community college enrollment is…

Research suggests that numerous factors affect community college attendance. Therefore, when students choose to attend community college, those factors often are key aspects of their decisions. Nonetheless, limited information exists that identifies which particular traits affect community college choice and how the background characteristics of…

College-choice studies have long been conducted to help colleges improve their recruitment strategies (Chapman, 1981; Hossler & Gallagher, 1987; Jackson, 1982; Litten, 1982). The dominant college-choice models and studies have, however, focused solely on traditional aged students seeking to enroll in four-year colleges/universities upon high…