The diversity of higher education institutions is changing, and more post-traditional students, including those associated with the military, are engaging in higher education. Almost every post-secondary institution in the United States has military students. In 2020, $11.5 billion was spent on over 875,000 eligible military students. Military students often prefer online courses at community colleges due to flexibility around their military career, open-access, and affordability. Yet, few studies examine active military servicemembers alone and, when research is performed, a lack of thorough data collection exists. Therefore, this study focused on active military students in online education in California Community Colleges. It has a significant military presence, offers more online courses, and issues more certificates than any other higher education system, making an ideal place to conduct this initial research. This study examined student course success between online courses and traditional courses, compared course success of active military to non-military, and compared active military, veteran, and non-military students' credential earning rates. This quantitative, non-experimental study used ex post facto from the California Community College Chancellor's Office's Management Information Systems DataMart. Data from 2012-2013 until 2018-2019 were collected and analyzed using t-tests and trend analysis implemented as multiple regression. The results showed an improvement in military students' course success rate over time, although online courses had a lower success rate than traditional courses. Non-military students' course success rates also improved over time, although there was no statistically significant correlation compared to active military students' rates for online, traditional, nor all courses. All students' credentials earned rate increased over the seven school years and active military students showed a significant increase in credentials earned rate over veteran students. However, there was no effect of being a military student (active or veteran) compared to non-military students when analyzing the credentials earned rate. The results lead to practical implications. The Department of Defense and individual military branches should remove the current Tuition Assistance restrictions, improve incentives, and increase resources. Community college practitioners should invest money and time into active military students, similar to those for veteran students. State and college leaders should continue to improve institutional support for online courses so all students' success rates improve. Finally, it is recommended practitioners compare all special populations to students not in the special population, similar to how the current study was performed, and provide the necessary institutional support to hopefully improve student success. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]