Objective: Despite community colleges accounting for 34% of all undergraduate enrollment, research on substance-use patterns among community college students is limited. Community college students may engage in substance use differently than their 4-year university counterparts due to differences in psychosocial factors and decreased availability…

Objective: This quantitative study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students' persistence at a minority-serving, open-access, public, urban community college in New York City. Specifically, the project looked at factors associated with mid-semester college withdrawals during spring 2020 when the college shifted to remote instruction…

Objective: This study examines how accurately a small set of short-term academic indicators can approximate long-term outcomes of community college students so that decision-makers can take informed actions based on those indicators to evaluate the current progress of large-scale reform efforts on long-term outcomes, which in practice will not be…

Objectives/Research Question: This study aims to explore who transfers between 2-year colleges (lateral transfer students) and how these students fare in terms of degree attainment. More specifically, this research explores two research questions: (1) What are the predictors of lateral transfer? (2) Is lateral transfer associated with degree…

Objective: This research study examined gender wage equality among administrators across Arizona's ten community college districts comprising 19 colleges. Method: Both descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze salary data. Results: All 19 college campuses evidenced differences in median income between 12-month, full-time women…

Objective/Research Question: Community college "Promise" programs have proliferated recently, particularly in areas with many low-income, academically struggling students. Many Promise programs restrict eligibility by high school performance but set eligibility thresholds quite low. As such they function as "low-bar" merit…

Objective: Community colleges have considerable potential to grow the number of individuals who complete STEM baccalaureate degrees and to broaden access to educational opportunities in STEM. However, efforts to tap this potential have been hampered by nagging questions about whether community colleges prepare students adequately for advanced STEM…

Objective/Research Question: The urgency to replace retiring community college leaders has been a topic of research and discussion for the past two decades. Concurrently, expansive definitions of leadership and collaborative approaches to leading have emerged. The central research question for this study was: How do sitting community college…

Objective: Upward transfer pathways are an important mechanism for advancing gender equity in STEM. Yet, little is known about how students access lucrative STEM careers and leadership positions via community colleges. This study explores the factors that may promote computing leadership identity among upward transfer students, focusing…

Objective: We estimated the correlations between the "pathways" chosen by community college students--in terms of desired credentials and fields of study, as well as other choices and outcomes along the paths--and the attainment of credentials with labor market value. We focused on the extent to which there were recorded changes in…

Objective: The purpose of this study is twofold. First, this study explores individual student characteristics, specifically those related to demographics, financial need, academic characteristics, and social and cultural capitals, related to study abroad participation among community college students. Second, this study identifies when over the…

Objective: The purpose of our study was to identify the factors associated with federal loan default among a nationally-representative sample of community college students. The guiding research question was: For community college students who borrow federal loans, to what extent do demographic, academic, and enrollment characteristics relate to…

Objective: This study explored how high school and postsecondary academic parameters may relate to the choice of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) major for students beginning their postsecondary education at community colleges. Our study incorporated these two clusters of factors into a statistical model to examine STEM…

Objective: The purpose of this study is to understand the relationship between organizational characteristics, state political climate, and student civic engagement at community colleges, operationalized in this article as student voting. Method: Utilizing a unique cross-sectional dataset compiled by the Institute for Democracy & Higher…

Objective: Increasing rural community college degree attainment is very important to foster rural areas' economic and social well-being. Rural community colleges differ greatly from their suburban and urban counterparts in financial aid patterns and student bodies. However, existing literature is vacant with respect to student financial aid and…