Get With the Program: Accelerating Community College Students’ Entry...

“This paper was about the critical importance of helping community college students get into and through a program of study and how colleges can rethink their practices to increase rates of program entry and completion. It presented a simple method that community colleges can use to begin to measure rates of program entry and completion using data on students’ actual course-taking behaviors rather than on their declared program of study or intent, which can change and are unreliable indicators of student behavior. This method was used to track the progress and outcomes of first-time college students over five years using data from an anonymous sample of community colleges” (p.3). (Abstractor: Author)

Full publication title: Get With the Program: Accelerating Community College Students’ Entry into and Completion of Programs of Study

“The analysis shows that students must enter a program of study as soon as possible. Students who do not enter a program within a year of enrollment are far less likely to ever enter a program and therefore less likely to earn a credential. The paper suggests ways community colleges can rethink their practices at key stages of students’ experience to substantially increase rates of student completion” (p.i): • “College leaders…need to agree on and communicate a clear and compelling vision for improving student outcomes and set ambitious goals that faculty and staff will want to work to achieve” (p.26). • “…[C]ollege leaders need to empower faculty and staff from across divisions to…identify priority areas for improvement, and implement, evaluate, and further improve changes to practice. Leaders also need to provide resources for professional development that strategically supports the efforts by faculty and staff in the redesign work” (p.26). • “To the extent possible, decisions on how to improve practice should be supported by evidence. Colleges should assess the effectiveness of earlier efforts to improve student success. Moreover, any new innovations should be evaluated to ensure they are helping to improve student outcomes” (p.26). • "Colleges should evaluate not just the effectiveness of innovations but also their costs. In general, the goal should be to increase organizational productivity – that is, to increase rates of student success and improve student learning outcomes without requiring net additional staff and monetary resources” (p.26). (Abstractor: Author)

• Last Updated:
• Created:
• Resource Publication Date: 2012
• Author(s): Jenkins, Davis; Cho, Sung-Woo
• Organizational Author(s): Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University
• Funding Source: Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
• Resource Availability: Publicly available
• Posted by: Laura Aron
• Posted in: Workforce System Strategies