Redesigning America’s Community Colleges
Redesigning America’s Community Colleges

Author: Thomas R. Bailey

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2015-04-09

Total Pages: 301

ISBN-13: 0674368282

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In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.

The Costs of Completion
The Costs of Completion

Author: Robin G. Isserles

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2021-12-07

Total Pages: 349

ISBN-13: 1421442086

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To improve community college success, we need to consider the lived realities of students. Our nation's community colleges are facing a completion crisis. The college-going experience of too many students is interrupted, lengthening their time to completing a degree—or worse, causing many to drop out altogether. In The Costs of Completion, Robin G. Isserles contextualizes this crisis by placing blame on the neoliberal policies that have shaped public community colleges over the past thirty years. The disinvestment of state funding, she explains, has created austerity conditions, leading to an overreliance on contingent labor, excessive investments in advisement technologies, and a push to performance outcomes like retention and graduation rates for measuring student and institutional success. The prevailing theory at the root of the community college completion crisis—academic momentum—suggests that students need to build momentum in their first year by becoming academically integrated, thereby increasing their chances of graduating in a timely fashion. A host of what Isserles terms "innovative disruptions" have been implemented as a way to improve on community college completion, but because disruptions are primarily driven by degree attainment, Isserles argues that they place learning and developing as afterthoughts while ignoring the complex lives that define so many community college students. Drawing on more than twenty years of teaching, advising, and researching largely first-generation community college students as well as an analysis of five years of student enrollment patterns, college experiences, and life narratives, Isserles takes pains to center students and their experiences. She proposes initiatives created in accordance with a care ethic, which strive to not only get students through college—quantifying credit accumulation and the like—but also enable our most precarious students to flourish in a college environment. Ultimately, The Costs of Completion offers a deeper, more complex understanding of who community college students are, why and how they enroll, and what higher education institutions can do to better support them.

Student Success in the Community College
Student Success in the Community College

Author: Terry U. O'Banion

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-12-15

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 1475856334

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For much of the twentieth century, the definition of success for most community colleges revolved around student retention and graduation. This definition no longer works—if it ever did. In Student Success in the Community College: What Really Works? respected community college leaders, researchers, and innovators argue that student success is about redesigning community colleges in a manner that is consistent with each college’s mission, goals, student population, and resources. Concluding that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to increasing student success, chapter authors analyze national, state, and regional efforts to increase student success; identify principles institutions can use to frame student success initiatives; and outline specific actions community colleges can take to increase student—and institutional—success. Student Success in the Community College: What Really Works? also provides concrete examples of effective student success initiatives in a variety of community college settings.

What Excellent Community Colleges Do
What Excellent Community Colleges Do

Author: Joshua S. Wyner

Publisher: Harvard Education Press

Published: 2019-01-02

Total Pages: 184

ISBN-13: 1612506518

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In What Excellent Community Colleges Do, Joshua S. Wyner draws on the insights and evidence gained in administering the inaugural Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence. This book identifies four domains of excellence—degree completion, equity, student learning, and labor market success—and describes in rich detail the policies and practices that have allowed some community colleges to succeed in these domains. By starting with a holistic definition of excellence, measuring success against that definition, and then identifying practices and policies that align with high levels of student success, the author seeks to contribute to the growing body of knowledge about improving student success in community colleges.

Community College Success
Community College Success

Author: Isa Adney

Publisher: Norlightspress.com

Published: 2012-02

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 9781935254621

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While community colleges give first-generation students a chance to open the door to education, simply walking through that door is not enough. Once there, many students feel completely alone. As members of a rapidly growing population, these students are in desperate need of a practical, friendly, and useful resource.

13 Ideas That Are Transforming the Community College World
13 Ideas That Are Transforming the Community College World

Author: Terry U. O'Banion

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2019-03-15

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 1475844913

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America’s community colleges are experiencing the most creative and substantive period of transformation in their 118-year history. There has never been so much research, so much support from foundations, and so much commitment from national leaders to reimagine community colleges for today and for the future. 13 Ideas that Are Transforming the Community College World, edited by Terry U. O’Banion, is the seminal work that captures the major ideas faced by community college leaders in this period of transformation. The book includes 23 authors representing 12 national organizations, perhaps the most significant and substantive list of individuals ever to participate in an edited book on the community college. Each author is a nationally-recognized authority on his or her chapter, and all have played major roles as leaders of national organizations.

College Success
College Success

Author: David L. Strickland

Publisher:

Published: 2015

Total Pages: 323

ISBN-13: 9781627513593

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A comprehensive, student-centered reading and study guide instructors and students can use in a college success course.

Austerity Blues
Austerity Blues

Author: Michael Fabricant

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2016-11

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1421420678

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Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y -- Z

Activity Systems Analysis Methods
Activity Systems Analysis Methods

Author: Lisa C. Yamagata-Lynch

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2010-07-15

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1441963219

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In the last two decades, there has been growing interest in pursuing theoretical paradigms that capture complex learning situations. Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) is one of several theoretical frameworks that became very popular among educational researchers because it conceptualizes individuals and their environment as a holistic unit of analysis. It assumes a non-dualistic ontology and acknowledges the complexities involved in human activity in natural settings. Recently, reputable journals such as the American Psychologist, Educational Psychologist, and Educational Researcher that are targeted for a wide-range of audience have included articles on CHAT. In many of such articles, CHAT has been referred to as social constructivism, sociocultural theory, or activity theory. Activity systems analysis is one of the popular methods among CHAT researchers for mapping complex human interactions from qualitative data. However, understanding the methods involved in activity systems analysis is a challenging task for many researchers. This difficulty derives from several reasons. First the original texts of CHAT are in Russian and there have been numerous authors who report on the difficulties of reconciling translation problems of the works of original authors’ such as Vygotsky and Leontiev. Second, in North America activity systems analysis has deviated from the Russian scholars’ intentions and Engeström’s original work using the triangle model to identify tensions to overcome and bring about sociopolitical change in participant practices. Third, to this date there are numerous publications on the theoretical background of activity theory and studies reporting the results of using activity systems analysis for unpacking qualitative data sets, but there have been no methodological publications on how researchers engage in activity systems analysis. Thus, there is a dearth of literature in both book and journal publications that guide researchers on the methodological issues involving activity systems analysis.

Transformational Learning in Community Colleges
Transformational Learning in Community Colleges

Author: Chad Hoggan

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781682534045

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Transformational Learning in Community Colleges details the profound social and emotional change that nontraditional and historically underserved students undergo when they enter community college. Drawing on case study material and student observations, the book outlines the systematic supports that two-year institutions must put in place to help students achieve their educational and professional goals. The book offers guidance on how a renewed focus on student transformational learning can complement the skills curriculum, accelerate current reforms, and help lead to higher student success rates. "Chad Hoggan and Bill Browning have produced an excellent guide for assuring greater levels of success at the place community colleges and students meet at scale everyday: the classroom. It will provide community college academic leaders and faculty alike with a guide that will significantly improve student success in the classroom. This book is both timely and relevant as the classroom becomes the next frontier for community college reformation." --Kenneth L. Ender, professor of practice, The Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research, and president emeritus, William Rainey Harper College "Transformational Learning in Community Colleges makes a meaningful contribution to the literature on student success by addressing pressing challenges such as the need for coordinated efforts at the program level. Intended for practitioners in community colleges and career pathways training programs, this book focuses on the changes students experience in college and provides helpful real-life examples, case studies, and applied strategies for readers to use." --Meredith Archer Hatch, senior associate director for Workforce and Academic Alignment, Achieving the Dream Chad D. Hoggan is an associate professor of Adult, Workforce, and Continuing Professional Education in the Department of Educational Leadership, Policy, and Human Development at North Carolina State University. Bill Browning is an independent consultant with a thirty-year career combining management roles in corporate training, a community-based nonprofit, community college, and workforce development policy and leadership training. Robert G. Templin, Jr. is professor of the practice at the Belk Center for Community College Leadership and Research at North Carolina State University and senior fellow of the College Excellence Program at The Aspen Institute.