Community colleges serve as crucial gateways to social and economic prosperity for millions of Americans, providing opportunities for career stability and social advancement. The success of this educational pathway hinges on the seamless alignment of a college's mission and goals, creating an environment conducive to faculty excellence in…

An increasing preference for nondegree credentials evident prior to the pandemic has become even more apparent. Nondegree credentials can and sometimes should be part of a postsecondary education, but the inchoate credentials environment encourages poor planning and unwise decisions. The competitive advantages that a balanced education can offer…

Community colleges provide broad access to postsecondary education to students of every identity, background, and level of academic preparedness. However, while community colleges offer a diverse range of educational and career pathways, completion rates remain low. In the past decade, the guided pathways framework emerged as a model for how…

Chief fundraising officers at technical colleges within the Technical College System of Georgia face complex challenges, including scarce resources, small staff sizes, and a lack of formal training. The purpose of the study was to understand how chief fundraising officers use self-directed learning experiences and learning projects to build…

Until recently, most community colleges have done little through the new student onboarding process to help entering students explore academic and career interests, choose a program of study aligned to their interests, and develop a plan for completing such a program. This has been the case even though many students start college without clear…

The Wyoming Community College Commission's internal strategic plan for the four-year period spanning 2021 through 2024 is tied directly to the statutorily required Priorities established by the Commission. Specific agency sections for mission statement, responsibilities and accomplishments will be relayed in the agency's annual report. For the…

The enterprise resource planning (ERP) industry is a billion-dollar software industry with two prominent higher education ERP companies bringing in a combined $14.27 billion the third quarter of their 2024 fiscal years (Oracle, 2023; Workday, 2023). ERP systems stemmed from materials resource planning (MRP) systems in the manufacturing industry…

Community college presidencies don't last forever. Sometimes they do last until retirement, but in other cases, leaders decide they want to make at least one move before then, which usually entails a move to another institution. This involves a diplomatic dance, with decisions to be made about whom to tell and when about the possible opportunity,…

As an alternative to Hunt et al.'s (1997) general guidelines for strategic planning and Chance and William's (2009) summative rubric for evaluating university strategic plans, this article proposes a new rubric, the Rubric for Formatively Assessing Strategic Plans in Higher Education. The purpose of this new rubric is to provide institutional…

To build back enrollments after a decade of downward trends, community colleges need to substantially increase retention as well as recruitment, particularly among students from underserved groups, who represent a growing share of prospective college students. Community College Research Center (CCRC) has developed a framework called…

Implementing institution-wide, systemic change is typically a long and often challenging task for college leaders to undertake. Because each institution is different, the combination of internal and external factors that drive institutional change can vary greatly from college to college, and from moment to moment. Achieving the Dream (ATD), which…

Transfer students are increasingly important to the enrollment health of colleges and universities. But how do transfer students search for a new institution to attend? The "2020 Transfer Student Experience Report" examines responses from a study of 1,100 current and prospective transfer students. This report discusses the following…

The purpose of this dissertation was to understand how a new two-year college was designed and implemented within the context of and as a response to the completion agenda by focusing on the decisions and actions of the Administrative Leadership Team (ALT). The research was framed around the completion agenda themes of access, affordability, and…

This chapter advises community college leaders how to achieve mission balance by using strategic planning to make mission-critical decisions and take decisive action.

Through its program review process, the Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) coordinates a statewide system of review of programs of study provided by community colleges in Illinois. The intent of this review process is to support colleges in making campus-level planning and decision-making related to the quality, cost effectiveness,…