Keywords

Community colleges; developmental education; career-technical education; completions

The Role of Community Colleges in the United States

Community colleges in the United States have played a pivotal role in higher education, even if four-year colleges have garnered more attention and resources. Community colleges were historically referred to as junior colleges, and were first created as liberal arts institutions offering a two-year curriculum. After World War II (and in the 1960s, in particular), these institutions expanded to provide job-training and more trade-oriented education. Eventually, community colleges became a landing ground for students who were not ready for college-level work after high school, for those attempting to eventually enter a four-year college by transferring, or for those who chose not to attend a four-year college to pursue a trade. Community college students now make up 45% of all undergraduate students in the country (NCES, 2014a).

Community colleges originated through public means, either through state systems or through local jurisdictions. Funding is still predominantly derived from local and state tax bases, which make up approximately 45% of the revenue source for community colleges nationwide (NCES, 2014b). This keeps costs relatively low (especially when compared to private four-year colleges) for students who seek to continue their education at these institutions.

In the American general public, the community college is often seen as a stepping stone between high school and four-year colleges. The idea of transferring from a community college into a four-year college for students who want to save money, or are not sure about what to pursue in a university, is the way many people envision as the primary role for community colleges. However, due to the broad mission of community colleges from the beginning of their creation, the community college is often a catch-all for people who are looking to extend their education locally, in a cost-effective way. The ages of entering students may vary greatly, with some students seeking to change their careers or enhance their existing knowledge base through community college coursework.

The sheer variety of students who enter community colleges in the present day may lead some to question the exact role of the community college. Are these institutions supposed to lead students toward the completion of awards and to the successful transfer to four-year institutions? Or are they designed to be a service point for students who are not ready for college-level work, or are unsure of their future plans? Should community colleges emulate the academically oriented programs of four-year colleges, or should they focus on shorter and more career-ready pathways that lead directly to the labor market? Due to the great diversity and multiple roles that community colleges often play with limited resources, there is an underlying tension between these institutions providing access to students and also being accountable to their eventual success, often measured in completion or successful transfer to a four-year college.

This chapter will delve deeper into the mission of community colleges, the roles they play for the students who enter them, and the challenges they face in accommodating the various types of students. We will examine this tension between being open and available to all, while attempting to maintain standards of success, mostly in award completion and job attainment after community college.

Community College Students: A Variety of Paths and Outcomes

Community colleges play a multitude of roles for many different types of students, with different interests and intentions after college. While many people who are not familiar with community colleges think that they are merely a bridge to four-year colleges, this is only true for students with a clear purpose of completing some or all of their general education requirements and then transferring, with or without an associate degree. However, there are many students who arrive who don’t consider transferring at all, and they fall into a variety of categories. Some students arrive with an interest in a subject, and want to take a class or two without committing to a certificate (usually a one-year award in a specific skill or trade) or an associate degree (usually a two-year award that signifies the completion of a program). Others have an interest in a skill or trade, and want to complete a specific certificate to enter a designated field. These two groups of students are often taking a prescribed “burst” of coursework, and are not taking courses that lead towards a four-year bachelor’s degree. The students in this category who seek to earn some type of skill-based certificate are often termed as “career-technical education” students, or CTE students.

Still, almost 65% of students who enter the community college in the United States are interested in attaining an associate degree by completing coursework that is designed to be completed within two academic years (NCES, 2014a). However, about 24% of the students in the National Student Clearinghouse data who started at a two-year college actually finish with an associate degree or certificate at their starting institution, and only 15% among these two-year college starters eventually earn a bachelor’s degree within six years (Shapiro et al., 2012). These associate degrees are usually divided into two categories: (i) Associate of Arts (AA) and (ii) Associate of Science/Applied Associate of Science (AS/AAS). The first category is designed for students who wish to fulfill most, if not all of their general education requirements at the community college. These requirements are designed to form the basic requirements of a bachelor’s degree, before students take courses that are more aligned and specific to their academic interests, often known as a “major.” The second category is designed for students who have an interest in an applied subject area in the applied sciences or other nonhumanities and nonsocial science areas. In US community colleges, these students make up about 11% of the entering population (NCES, 2014a). These students often arrive at the community college with a particular focus on a specific trade or occupation, and seek to have the community college degree be their terminal degree. Instead of seeking a trade-oriented certificate, these students choose a longer curriculum, usually designed to be completed in two years. However, some of these AS/AAS students do eventually seek to transfer to a four-year college, although not nearly at the same frequency as AA students.

Academically, there are students who arrive at the community college unprepared for college-level work—developmental students. These students are assessed using various testing measurements to determine if they need help in a particular subject (usually reading, writing, and mathematics), as well as the severity of remediation (usually in multiple levels below college-level coursework). Developmental coursework bears no credits, which means that students are supposed to enroll and complete these courses without earning credits along the way. These courses are also usually in a sequenced format, in which students are prescribed one course to complete prior to moving on to the next course, if they are referred to multiple levels below college level.

In US community colleges, developmental students actually make up the majority of all entering students (Bailey, Jeong, & Cho, 2010). These students often end up at the community college since they have some intention to pursue an academic career beyond high school, but either have not considered entering a four-year college or knew that they were not ready for study at a four-year college. The community college then becomes a haven for these students who otherwise would have few other options to continue their academic careers.

This chapter focuses on these two types of students in the community college—developmental students and CTE students. These two groups are not exclusive to one another, as many developmental students aim to earn a credential in a CTE program, which accounts for about 7% of all entering community college students (NCES, 2014a). However, the populations broadly speaking are different enough to merit special attention. Students in these categories comprise a large percentage of most community colleges in the United States, and the groups themselves provide differing perspectives on access and success in these institutions.

Community College Students in Developmental Education

What should community colleges do with entering students who are not ready for college-level work? If the mission is to open access to all students, then these are the most in need of support once they enter the college. With regard to the scope of students who need developmental education, national statistics suggest that about 60% of all incoming community college students need some type of remedial coursework, based on assessments that students take once they enter the institution (Bailey et al., 2010), and anywhere from 58% to 68% of community college students take one of these courses (Attewell, Lavin, Domina, & Levey, 2006; NCES, 2011). At first, this type of statistic may appear astounding—a clear majority of entering community college students need some form of non-credit-bearing coursework in math, reading, or writing, in order to get them ready for college-level coursework. However, when accounting for the fact that community colleges generally admit any and all types of students into their campuses regardless of their preparation in high school, and the large majority of academic programs allow anyone to enter and begin them, it begins to make more sense that over half of the entering population is not ready for credit-bearing, college-level courses.

Based on a dataset with over a quarter-million community college students, tracked for three academic years, researchers explored the trajectories of students who were referred to some form of remediation in math or reading and writing (Bailey et al., 2010). Before this research, there was a vague understanding that most of the students who were referred to this form of coursework would take the class they were referred to, pass it, and move on to the next level of coursework. However, looking at the enrollment and completion patterns of students who were referred to the lowest levels of math remediation (see Figure 11.1), the authors found that only a small percentage of students were able to accomplish what they were recommended to do. For example, only about 16% of students who were referred to the lowest level of math remediation eventually completed their sequence and made it to college-level algebra within three years, while 43% of these students either never even enrolled or completed their first course, which is three levels below the college-level course.

This research provided evidence using existing administrative data that students who were referred to take developmental courses saw very little success in reaching basic milestones (e.g., passing a college-level algebra course that would be a required course for many other college-level courses). This work helped spur other research in remediation, with a clearer focus on pinpointing why so few students succeed in this type of coursework, and what pedagogical and structural changes should be made to help these students succeed.

The large majority of students entering community colleges need some form of remediation, and many of them ultimately do take a remedial course on campus. While some of these students eventually make it to a degree or transfer successfully to a four-year college, many more of these students do not. Some ideas for making fundamental changes in remediation include: (i) fast-tracking students towards college-level work, (ii) creating smaller modules that allow students to accessorize the types of remediation they need without taking an entire semester’s worth of work, or (iii) even eliminating remediation altogether in some states (e.g., Connecticut and Florida).

For students who are referred to near-college-level courses (i.e., one level below college level), it can be argued that these students may not even need an entire term’s worth of developmental education. Instead, some administrators have experimented with providing these students with a “fast-tracked” version of remediation that does not require an entire semester’s worth of work. This would invariably allow students who are less prepared for college-level work to catch up to their college-ready counterparts, faster.

Students at the Community College of Baltimore County in the state of Maryland have used a program called the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) that targets students who are just below college level in reading and writing, and places them into the same college-level English classrooms with students who were already assessed as being college-ready. In addition to this, administrators have provided these students with extra time after class to go over the contents of the class with other students and the instructor, providing them with another layer of academic support beyond the regular course. Using existing administrative data from the college, researchers have found that there are considerable differences in outcomes between students in ALP and comparable students who chose not to enter ALP and took the developmental course instead (Cho, Kopko, Jenkins, & Jaggars, 2012). Students who enrolled in ALP were more likely to enroll in and complete college-level algebra, and more likely to complete other college-level coursework as well.

In the states of North Carolina and Virginia, administrators in their respective community college systems have started developmental “modules,” or multiweek short courses that focus on one particular aspect of math or reading curricula. For example, if a student were referred to the highest level of remediation in math, the old rules would indicate that the students needed to enroll and complete in an entire semester’s worth of remediation. Given that some students may need specific parts of math remediation (e.g., functions and quadratic equations) without needing an entire semester’s worth of coursework, these modules are designed so that students can have a more custom-tailored approach to their developmental work. System administrators have just begun to fully implement these types of modules, so there is no indication on how effective these modules are on student outcomes, at least not until several more academic years have passed.

Having students who are not quite at college level when they enter the community college certainly allows for a greater diversity of students who seek to attain some form of higher education. Although there are significant barriers to progressing the developmental sequence of courses in many community colleges in the United States, administrators at both the institutional and state level are actively seeking ways to help these students complete remediation faster so that they can move on to credit-bearing coursework.

But what about the students who are referred to the very lowest levels of remediation? As we have seen in research using course enrollment and completion data, these students face treacherous odds in making it to college-level coursework. Does it make sense to push these students through the developmental gauntlet, even if the prescription is in module form? Are there other alternatives for these types of students, if college-level coursework is not realistically attainable during their time at the community college? Instead of pushing these students through more traditional academic pathways, perhaps it is more advantageous to direct these students toward more career-oriented subjects, which are often shorter and lead to marketable skills and specific job opportunities for students. These types of CTE and applied fields often provide students with a direct and more structured pathway to an award and a job, and may be a viable solution for developmental students who are looking to use the community college as a stepping stone toward success.

Community College Students in CTE and Applied Fields

Although community colleges across the United States have different types of majors and academic programs offered on their campuses, most have a clear distinction between transfer-oriented programs and career-oriented programs. In many community colleges or state systems in general, the students who seek to transfer to a four-year college once they first enter are provided a set of courses to take and complete for general education credits. These courses are often foundational in nature, and provide students with a similar set of courses that they would have had to enroll in during their first two years at a four-year college.

In this section, we focus on students who enter the community college with the intent to pursue a short-term certificate or an applied associate degree (an AS or AAS) instead, and are not seeking a transfer-oriented pathway. Using the US Department of Education’s Beginning Postsecondary Survey data from the 2003–2004 cohort, about 24% of students who enter a community college seek this type of non-transfer pathway, and about the same percentage of students complete a certificate or an associate degree as their highest level of attainment within six years. These CTE programs are wide-ranging and are often shorter in the length of time required, providing students with a more direct means to a job upon completion of their program (Shulock & Offenstein, 2012).

Traditionally, the largest types of these programs are within the fields of business and allied health, including nursing. Within the United States, the health fields have found considerable popularity in community colleges, with many nursing programs attracting competitive candidates and in many cases, necessitating waiting lists for entry into these programs. As evidence of this high demand to enroll in these types of programs, we even see a growing trend of “reverse transfer,” in which four-year college students leave their institutions to pursue these programs at a community college. A study by Hossler et al. (2012) finds that 14% of students who started at a four-year college enrolled at a community college outside of the summer months.

In one particular example of a federally funded CTE program in the United States, community colleges from nine different states are creating biosciences programs and certificates with direct links to biotech jobs in their immediate regions. The institutions are rolling out short-term certificates that focus on specialized skills and knowledge, as well as applied associate of science (AAS) degrees. Although most of these types of associate degrees are terminal, some of the associate degrees in the biosciences programs are “stackable credentials,” and can be used as building blocks towards the completion of bachelor’s degrees at four-year colleges.

Signs of Success and Efficiency in CTE Programs

Using longitudinal data on students from various state community college systems in the United States (Jenkins & Cho, 2012), we generally find that students who pursue these more career-oriented programs have relatively high success rates, and often fare better at the community college than students who pursue a transfer-oriented track. In this analysis, we define students as having entered a program of study if they completed at least three college-level courses in the program area. As such, these completion percentages are higher than if we had analyzed a sample of students who entered a program by simply declaring their major. For example, students in allied health had a 35% completion rate within five years, whereas students in liberal arts and sciences (often a track towards transfer to a four-year college) had a 22% completion rate within the same timeframe.

There are several potential reasons for why students in CTE fields see this type of success in community colleges. First, students who are more motivated to complete a certificate or a degree that will translate directly into an occupation may be self-selecting into these types of programs. Students in non-CTE fields may not see the direct benefits of completing their program the way that CTE students do. For example, transfer-oriented students will need at least four years to complete their bachelor’s degree, and often the associate degree is not a strong-enough incentive for students to complete it at the community college prior to transfer.

In addition to self-selection, another reason why CTE programs see high completion rates may lie in the programs themselves. The applied and technical programs in community colleges are often well-structured, and offer students a more limited range of course options to complete, compared to liberal arts and other transfer-oriented programs. In many transfer-oriented programs in the United States, students in community colleges are faced with a large set of general education course options, ranging from humanities to science requirements. In the state of Texas, there is even a state government course requirement for community college students who intend to transfer, which adds to the already lengthy list of course options.

In community colleges in the United States, these CTE programs offer students a viable option for relatively quick completion and entry into the workforce, with high demand for students in certain health-related sectors. Save for the programs that may require a waitlist or an application to enter, most CTE programs give all entering students an opportunity to achieve occupational goals at relatively low cost. For example, an Associate Degree Nursing program at a large community college in the state of North Carolina is approximately $8,000 for the length of the two-year program, with median entry-level salaries in the area starting at around $44,000. When compared to some programs at even four-year colleges, these types of CTE programs have high benefit-to-cost ratios.

The Completion Agenda and Access in Community Colleges

In recent years, both governmental and independent organizations have sounded the call to increase completion rates among students in American higher education institutions. In an address to the Joint Session of Congress in 2009, President Obama issued a national goal to have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world by the year 2020. In increasing completion rates, much of the attention has been rightly focused on community colleges and the students that fail to complete their programs of study. The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has implemented a multi-state initiative that addresses this issue in community colleges, called Completion by Design, which tasks participating institutions to improve their completion rates through more structured programs of study. Complete College America is an organization that is dedicated to improving completion rates among four-year and community colleges, and has their own set of completion goals and participating state systems.

Much of the focus on increasing completion in community college programs is to mirror the CTE program model – students have fewer opportunities to drop out if they have a more limited number of options to choose from. Recent papers on greater structure in community college programs (e.g., Scott-Clayton, 2011) have gained some traction among college and system administrators, who mostly agree that there is too much choice and room for failure among many of their programs. In creating a smorgasbord of options for students and creating too many choices, this school of thought theorizes that students are more likely to be unsure about their academic and career decisions, especially with the limited opportunities for receiving advising that students in large institutions may have.

Another way that community colleges are increasing their completion rates is to focus on students who are close to completing, but haven’t reached the finish line for a variety of reasons. If these reasons are mostly logistical and require minimal input from the college to push these students through, completion rates can improve significantly at relatively little cost.

Costs Associated with Noncompletion

The costs associated with students not completing the programs that they entered are substantial, and a recent study gives approximations on how much community colleges spend on the course pathways that students take (Belfield, Crosta, & Jenkins, 2014). Using a sample of community college students in a single institution and information on the state system’s costs per course and per program, researchers found that students who persist into their programs but fail to finish are much more inefficient for the college, compared to students who drop out early in their careers. In addition, the researchers found that improving certain key performance indicators (KPIs) improved overall completion more efficiently than others, using a simulation model. For example, improving first-to-second year persistence helped increase completion measures significantly more than improving college-level algebra completion.

The sources of inefficiency in community colleges stem from noncompletion, and there are many reasons why students do not complete. The researchers found that inefficiency by way of noncompletion is due to developmental coursework, students taking courses that do not count towards a credential, and students who transfer without earning an associate degree first. In institutions where generally any and all students are accepted, it is difficult to stem these types of inefficiencies when remediation is a reality for most incoming students, and students are faced with a multitude of course-taking options without enough advising opportunities.

Structured Pathways and Potential Research

Although there has been much descriptive work done on structured pathways in community colleges, there is yet no causal evidence that having more structure leads to better outcomes for students. As seen by Jenkins and Cho (2013), there is descriptive evidence that students who themselves take a more structured course path are more likely to finish, using the rubric of completing at least three college-level courses in a single program of study. However, the self-selection issue makes it difficult to determine whether structure itself leads to better student outcomes.

One way to determine whether structure directly leads to better outcomes would be run a randomized controlled trial (RCT) in a single institution, in which entering students are randomly assigned to either a more structured program of study or a program in which their course-taking options are more abundant. As there is no clear evidence that greater structure directly causes better academic outcomes, the control condition is not necessarily withholding beneficial services from students; in addition, students in the control condition who elect to switch to the treatment group would simply be dropped from the analysis and counted towards sample attrition. The proposed research design would focus on a handful of a college’s most popular programs, and would determine whether greater structure in a program leads to increased completion. Since greater structure is currently only theorized to be beneficial to students, an RCT would help provide more rigorous causal evidence on whether greater structure actually helps students achieve their completion goals.

Concluding Remarks

Community colleges in the United States play a challenging, yet crucial role in higher education. For hundreds of thousands of students who enter these institutions each year, community colleges are a destination for students who have a myriad of different planned or unplanned academic pathways. For the majority of students who arrive at the community college and are not ready for college-level work, these institutions become an absolute necessity for students who need the appropriate skills to land a job with a competitive wage. These students often have the choice of either multiple layers of developmental education, or if they are clear in what type of technical work they want to enter, can choose to enter a CTE program. For many of the students who test at the very lowest levels of remediation, perhaps their best chance to complete an award and earn a livable wage is enrolling in a CTE program and obtaining a marketable skill.

With open access in community colleges comes the immense challenge of helping developmental students who are not prepared for college-level coursework, and providing appropriate pathways to academic and financial success for all completion-seeking students. Community colleges in the United States remain deeply committed to providing access for all students who arrive at their doors, but this commitment is coming under increasing pressure from stakeholders who seek better academic performance from these institutions. Greater structure in programs appears to be a viable option for students, modeling the curricula in many career-based and applied programs, but there is room for future research on the impact that structure can have on completion outcomes.