Community colleges may face challenges supporting the unique needs of language minority (LM) students whose primary language is not English. Florida provides a unique context for examining whether LM students who are considered underprepared for college-level coursework benefit more from traditional developmental education programs in reading and…

We estimate labor market returns to terminal associate's degrees and certificates, with a particular focus on how returns for different credential types evolve over a longer period of time (eleven years post entry) than most of the prior literature. We also explore how returns vary depending on labor market conditions and on which labor market…

Developmental education (dev-ed) aims to help students acquire knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in college-level coursework. The traditional prerequisite approach to postsecondary dev-ed--where students take remedial courses that do not count toward a credential--appears to stymie progress toward a degree. At community colleges across the…

In the United States, transferring from a two-year program to a four-year program has become an increasingly important route toward a bachelor's degree. However, the pathway has an extremely high attrition rate. Utilizing two recent institutional reforms in the University System of Georgia, I show that allowing community colleges to offer…

One explanation for negative or null findings in prior research on postsecondary remediation is that college may be too late to address issues of academic underpreparedness. This study evaluates the impact on student outcomes when college math remediation is offered in the senior year of high school. The Seamless Alignment and Integrated Learning…

Recent efforts to increase college access and completion concentrate on reducing tuition rates at community colleges, but researchers and policy makers alike have expressed concern that such reductions may not lead to long-term gains in college completion. In this paper, I use detailed data on students' college enrollment and completion outcomes…

We examine how workers invest in human capital following unanticipated local labor market downturns. We find that, on average, two-year college enrollment increases by three students within three years for every one hundred workers laid off. This rise in enrollment accounts for half the observed increase in labor force nonparticipation following…

We use the natural experiment of a state lottery scholarship to measure the effect of generous financial aid on graduation rates at New Mexico's flagship public university. During the study period, the scholarship program paid full tuition for eight semesters for any state resident earning a 2.5 grade point average in their first semester at any…

Despite having been the largest source of financial aid to low-income college students in the United States, the traditional Pell Grant had one major limitation: If students enrolled in two semesters full-time, they would not have had any tuition support for the summer term of the same academic year. The year-round Pell (YRP) was implemented in…

I use nationally representative data from the Education Longitudinal Survey (ELS) to update the literature on returns to community college education. I compare the experiences of the ELS cohort that graduated high school in 2004 with those of the National Education Longitudinal Survey (NELS) cohort that graduated high school more than a decade…