“By 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world, and community colleges will produce an additional 5 million graduates.”—President Barack Obama, Building American Skills Through Community Colleges, March 2010 Since President Obama outlined the challenge above, community colleges across the country, as well as the American Association of […]
Completion Articles
First P-TECH Graduates Land Jobs at IBM
By the end of this summer, the first six graduates of P-TECH Brooklyn, New York City’s Pathways in Technology (P-TECH) Early College High School, will have associate of applied science (AAS) degrees in computer information systems to go with the high school diplomas they earned in May. Two of the students have already accepted jobs […]
The Power of Open Educational Resources
As the cost of higher education continues to increase, community colleges are striving to improve affordability for students across the country. When it comes to college costs, people often think of tuition or room and board — but one factor not often discussed is the rising cost of textbooks. Currently, the standard cost of textbooks […]
Pathway Partnerships Lead to Completion
With employers facing a severe shortage of workers with technical skills and the disappearance of high school vo-tech training, administrators at Minnesota West Community and Technical College have expanded their longtime partnership with a local secondary school. The pathway partnerships between Minnesota West and Worthington Senior High School were developed to help bridge the gap […]
IT Pathways’ Mentoring Program Makes All the Difference
Editor’s Note: This article is the second in a two-part series on IT pathway programs. Read the first installment on building successful programs from the ground up. Toward the end of the first year of a Department of Labor grant to Mississippi Delta Community College, Martha Claire Drysdale and her colleagues started noticing something surprising. […]
Data Matters: From Community College to Four-Year Institution
A recent report by the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center looks at the role of community colleges in student completion rates at four-year institutions. Nationally, nearly half (46 percent) of students who earned a four-year degree also enrolled in at least one semester of community college in the past decade. Let’s take a look at […]
Reverse-Transfer Agreement Adds More Graduates
Gregory Hamann, president of Linn-Benton Community College (LBCC) in Albany, Oregon, reported success toward the completion goal at the AACC conference. Through a 2012 Lumina grant and a state reverse transfer agreement in Oregon, the number of graduates increased by 400 statewide. Other innovative projects brought to scale include finding a new pathway via the […]
Data Matters: Transfer Students Who Complete 4-Year Degrees
The National Student Clearinghouse Research Center’s recent Signature Report, Completing College: A State-Level View of Student Attainment Rates, finds that in five states, more than one in five students who began at a two-year public institution finished at a four-year institution. Kansas tops the list. In that state, one in four students who started at […]
How California Is Improving Online Education
Editor’s Note: Earlier this week, we wrote about the pros and cons of online courses, mentioning the success that Butte-Glenn and Foothill-De Anza community college districts, in California, have had. In today’s article, we explore the tools and supports that can make the online-education experience more successful. California community colleges offer more than 41,000 online sections […]
Online Courses: the Pros and the Cons
When we consider education in the 21st century, we can’t help but think about advances in technology and the Internet, and how we, as community college leaders, can harness these innovations to help our students be successful. Online courses in particular present a unique opportunity for community colleges, because we cater in large part to […]