Objective/Research Question: Community college coursework is a crucial entry point for early childhood professionals seeking to advance their careers in education. In this study, we examine how degree candidates at a small community college experienced the shift to online learning and their reasons for persistence in college during the pandemic.…

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…

Objectives: Responding to Tinto's call for studies of retention that center on "the students' view of their experience" (p. 11), this research project reports findings from telephone interviews of 131 students who stopped out at our home institution, a large open admissions community college in the northeast. Our objective was to find…

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…

Introduction: While a considerable amount of extant scholarship describes the importance of and strategies for improving the postsecondary pathways of Black engineering students, most literature is contextualized within 4-year institutions. Objectives: The purpose of this article is to illuminate Black engineering students' experiences at…

Objective: The objective of this study was to create a model of English learners' (ELs) persistence based on theory and empirical research. Findings from this research informs community college educators in helping ELs persist and guide future research regarding this important student population. Method: We examined ELs' persistence using…

Objective: This study examined the effects of offering proactive student-success coaching, informed by predictive analytics, on student academic performance and persistence. Specifically, this study investigated semester grade point average (GPA) and semester-to-semester persistence of community college students as outcomes. Methods: This study…

Objective: Despite significant enrollment in community colleges, persistence and graduation rates are quite low. This study aims to better understand how students' person--environment relationships and self-organization together contribute to the persistence decisions of community college students. Using Spencer et al.'s "phenomenological…

Objective: This study examined how a set of theoretically derived factors predicted the educational attainment outcomes of Latina/o community college students. The guiding research question was, "What precollege and background characteristics, college experiences, and environmental pull factors uniquely predict persistence, certificate or…

Objective: This study examines the characteristics, course enrollment patterns, and academic outcomes of students who started their college careers in noncredit courses. Method: Drawing upon a rich dataset that includes transcript and demographic information on both for-credit and noncredit students in multiple institutions, this study explores…

Objective: This study examines whether Louisiana's performance-based funding (PBF) implementation in 2011 impacts various academic outcomes at community colleges, and whether the impact varies for institutions with higher proportions of underrepresented students. Method: Using institutional-level panel data between 2006 and 2016, I employ…

Objective: The process by which students decide to stay in college has been primarily based on models that are independent of geographic context. This article describes the local labor market in which community college students are situated and discusses the multiple and complex ways these labor markets impact student decisions to persist and…

Objective: The purpose of this study is to apply Yosso's community cultural wealth framework to the experiences of Latino male community college students to understand how they balance family obligations, work, and academics while also navigating their educational pathways. Method: The research team conducted 23 semistructured focus groups with…

Objective: We investigate whether performance funding--an increasingly prevalent state policy that allocates appropriations based on outcomes that prioritize retention and completion--places minority-serving institutions (MSIs) at a financial disadvantage due to these institutions serving a greater proportion of historically underrepresented…

Objective: Traditional-age students attending a rural community college in Kentucky's Appalachian region were interviewed, along with faculty members and administrators, to identify phenomena serving as sources of encouragement or as barriers to retention from the point of entry to the point of transfer. Method: Students' perspectives were…