A program designed to improve transfers for community college students moving to institutions in the California State University system has inspired the University of California’s Transfer Pathways, which started last month. Now California community college students have detailed course maps specifying the requirements for transferring their credits to 10 UC majors, and 11 more pathways […]
Completion Articles
Dual Enrollment Spikes in Maryland
This article originally appeared at the Community College Daily. Significantly more Maryland high school students are earning college credit before graduating high school, according to the Maryland Association of Community Colleges (MACC). Dual enrollments at the state’s 16 community colleges jumped 20 percent in fall 2014 compared to the prior year. Dual enrollment programs allow […]
Focusing on the Final 10 Percent
This excerpted piece, by Kevin Kruger, president of NASPA — Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, can be accessed in full at Community College Daily, where it originally appeared. As a nation, we are entering the final stretch of the 2020 college completion challenge announced by President Obama in his first joint address to Congress […]
Rural College Sees Big Gains
Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from a recent article at Community College Daily. East Central Community College (ECC) in rural Mississippi logged a whopping 62 percent increase in pre-baccalaureate associate degrees awarded from 2014 to 2015 by making a few high-impact, low-cost changes. The overall completion rate – including certificates and technical degrees, as well […]
Improve Advising to Help Students Reach Completion
“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 […]
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 […]