Tag Archives: community and technical colleges

Success Coaching Improves College Students’ Academic Progress

April 19, 2019 DVP-Praxis

Personalized, data-informed ‘Success Coaching’ improves community college students’ academic progress

Colleges and universities across the country are increasingly implementing technology-mediated advising or coaching in an effort to more effectively support students’ academic and non-academic needs. By providing services that are personalized, proactive, and informed by real-time data on students’ academic and non-academic progress and challenges, success coaching has the potential to help students stay on path and improve postsecondary attainment rates.

Less than 40 percent of community college students earn a postsecondary credential of any kind within six years. Although barriers to completion are often academic in nature, many community college students—a diverse population of learners including recent high school graduates, returning adult students, and incumbent workers looking to upgrade skills—face challenges not directly related to academics, including balancing study with work, childcare, and other life responsibilities; financial pressures; personal health needs; and uncertainty about career goals, how college courses connect with job opportunities, and how to prepare and search for employment.

We are currently working with a consortium of 10 North Carolina community colleges that are using data-informed Success Coaching to proactively address students’ academic and personal needs. Our evaluation is examining the impact of this approach on students’ retention and completion outcomes. The initiative—called Carolina Works and led by Central Carolina Community College—is funded by a First in the World validation grant by the U.S. Department of Education, which seeks to test interventions for student success that are supported by previous evidence. The impact study follows an experimental design in which the outcomes of students randomly assigned to receive Success Coaching services are compared to outcomes of students not assigned a coach.

Although the study is still underway, preliminary results – summarized in our March 2019 Carolina Works Evaluation Brief—suggest that success coaching has a positive impact on students’ academic outcomes. Specifically, results from the earliest cohort of students suggest that success coaching improves students’ longer-term retention rates by an average of three percentage points. Preliminary analyses also suggest that specific coaching practices may be particularly effective in improving student outcomes. For example, early retention outcomes were higher for students in the subset of colleges in which Success Coaches are spending a greater amount of time engaging with students outside of their offices.

DVP-PRAXIS is documenting the operationalization of the Success Coaching model across the 10 North Carolina institutions to better understand best practices that may improve success rates for more students. Final results – which will include credential completion in addition to retention outcomes—will be available in Fall 2020.

Jessa Lewis Valentine

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Addressing transportation barriers is needed to improve college access and success

December 03, 2018 DVP-Praxis

Addressing transportation barriers for low-income students and working adults is needed to improve college access and success

Last year, the Kresge Foundation brought together a small group of thought leaders, transit officials, and higher education leaders working on transportation and college access and success. These “pace setters” identified key transportation barriers as well as promising solutions that focused on the role of mass transit systems in helping students get to college from home and work – a critical issue for low-income students and working adults attending public 2-year and 4-year institutions. Recent data from the College Board underscores the significant costs of transportation for an average commuter student, which accounts for 18% of their total living expenses.

We produced a topical brief, Overcoming Transportation Barriers to Improve Postsecondary Success, that examines the nexus between transportation and higher education based on a review of research literature and publicly available reports, interviews from a convenience sample of professionals working on these issues, and ideas curated from a Roundtable hosted by the Kresge Foundation. The brief provides three key takeaways:

  1.  1. Colleges and Universities have been providing transportation solutions for students for at least two decades, including discounted or free transit passes, shuttle or vanpool programs, and more recently, partnerships with rideshare companies.
  2. 2. Although transportation barriers are widely believed to affect college access and success, there is very little evidence documenting the relationship between student retention and completion in college with the availability and utilization of transportation programs.
  3. 3. Transportation solutions must account for the capacity of public mass transit systems – namely the extent to which they are robust and far-reaching in a community.

 
Transportation barriers include cost and affordability; route frequencies and schedules; housing and work proximity; and, reliability and quality. To address these barriers, colleges and mass transit systems need to collaborate and cost-share in ways that benefit students. The good news is that such collaboration can yield increased ridership for public transportation and increased retention for colleges and universities, which can yield increased revenues for both.

There appears to be a preponderance of programmatic solutions to meet the transportation needs of low-income students and working adults – including the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Authority’s U-Pass program with 15 college and university partners; and the City Colleges of Chicago’s Ventra U-Pass program for full-time students. These programs have strong ridership, and there are anecdotal stories of how they benefit students; yet before policy solutions and private investments can be scaled, there is a need to build the evidence-base by documenting the impact of transportation solutions – especially discounted or free transit passes for student – on college retention and completion.

We stand ready to partner with LA Metro and City Colleges of Chicago – and with the Kresge Foundation – to help demonstrate the viability of these transit pass programs by conducting quasi-experimental and experimental studies of their impact. By focusing a demonstration and evaluation on public 2-year and 4-year colleges and universities in large urban environments, we can also shed light on how equity in college access and success can be further supported and achieved.

Derek V. Price

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Pathways Linking Non-Degree and Credit Programs Can Help Students Meet Academic and Career Goals

November 01, 2018 DVP-Praxis

Pathways Linking Non-Degree and Credit Programs Can Help Students Meet Academic and Career Goals

The burden for making sure college-level learning counts for college credit should not be on the community college student. Instead, linking non-degree and credit programs in which college-level learning occurs should be part of the intentional design of guided and career pathways that colleges develop. Aligning non-credit and credit programming is an essential aspect for a student-centered college, and some student-centered community colleges are exhibiting this principle by rethinking how they prepare students for success in the labor market, and by connecting workforce development and credit-based education and training programs.

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The opportunity for colleges to meet students’ academic and career goals and improve their academic and job outcomes is huge. Millions of community college students are currently enrolled in non-degree programs, according to the American Association of Community College’s Fast Facts from 2017. According to the US Department of Education in their 2016 Adult Education and Training Survey, 27% of adults have a non-degree postsecondary certificate, a certification, or a license.

We recently worked with seven community colleges that formed the Northeast Resiliency Consortium (NRC). Led by Passaic County Community College, and including Atlantic Cape Community College, Bunker Hill Community College, Capital Community College, Housatonic Community College, Kingsborough Community College, and LaGuardia Community College, the consortium was awarded a U.S. Department of Labor Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College Career Training Grant. Achieving the Dream served as the convening and technical assistance partner for the colleges. DVP-Praxis and Equal Measure served as the third-party evaluator for the consortium.

The evaluation of these colleges’ work to link non-credit and credit-based programs shows promising results for students’ college and job success. A higher percentage of students enrolled on non-degree to credit pathways banked or earned college credits, transitioned to credit-based programs, and gained and were retained in employment than a matched comparison group who were not enrolled in programs that had a non-degree to credit link. To learn more about how colleges are doing this important work, read the issue brief, “Creating Opportunity for All: Building Pathways from Continuing Education to Credit Programs.”

Students deserve access to clear, coherent pathways in their colleges, whether they enroll in non-credit short-term education and training programs that yield non-degree certifications or pursue credentials and degrees through credit-based programs. We believe that when colleges connect non-degree and credit-based programs, these pathways can smooth the way for students to work toward a college degree even if they begin their studies in a non-degree program.

To achieve this seamless pathway for students requires a whole college solution, with clearly defined and widely recognized mechanisms for assessing the competencies and skills imparted in non-degree programs, and subsequently mapping these competencies to credit courses and programs at the college. These formal mechanisms should be codified in institutional policy, and communicated on college websites, through advising sessions, and via instructors in both non-credit and credit courses. These mechanisms should become part of the standard practices at colleges so more students can meet their academic and career goals no matter where they begin their postsecondary education and training.

Derek V. Price

 

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Providing support services for students improve educational and employment outcomes

October 03, 2018 DVP-Praxis

Providing support services for students improve educational and employment outcomes – a benefit for students, colleges, and employers.

Last month marked the end of four rounds of federal investments in community and technical colleges through the Trade Adjustment Assistance Community College and Career Training Grant program. In this final round, we evaluated Wisconsin’s Advancing Careers and Training for Healthcare (ACT) consortium grant, a statewide project with participation from all colleges in the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) to develop, improve, and expand education and training pathways for healthcare related occupations.

As part of the third-party evaluation, we conducted an impact study focused on grant participants enrolled in healthcare programs of study who received grant-funded support services, including academic and non-academic supports provided inside and outside the classroom. The Executive Summary of our evaluation can be found here; we also invite you to download the full report.

The delivery of support services was the most common strategy implemented across the consortium to improve participant outcomes. Approximately 70% of ACT for Healthcare participants in grant-funded programs, representing 2,297 students, received at least one grant-funded support service. Academic supports were more widespread across the consortium than non-academic supports, reaching a larger number of students. Academic supports delivered in class reached the largest number of participants (1,173 students) while out-of-class academic supports was the second largest support service type, reaching 785 participants. Grant-funded non-academic supports also reached a substantial number of participants; for example, non-academic supports delivered within classrooms reached 715 participants. It is important to note that many colleges implemented multiple support types; for example, a combination of academic and non-academic supports, or a combination of supports delivered both in-class and out-of-class. Of the nearly 2,300 participants receiving support services, one-third received more than one support service type.

A second reason for focusing the impact study on these participants is the growing national attention to the importance of support services for adult learners. The provision of academic and non-academic supports is an increasingly popular strategy pursued by community and technical colleges nationwide to boost success and completion rates for their students. According to recent estimates, fewer than 40% of community college students go on to earn a postsecondary credential of any kind within six years. Barriers to completion are often academic in nature, as an increasing proportion of students arrive to college academically unprepared. However, many community and technical college students also face challenges not directly related to academics, including balancing study with work, childcare, and other life responsibilities; financial pressures; personal health needs; and uncertainty regarding career goals, how college courses connect with job opportunities, and how to prepare and search for employment. The prominence of this issue is evidenced by the growing interest in #RealCollege – a national movement of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers catalyzed by the Hope Center for College, Community, and Justice at Temple University.

The evaluation results are quite strong:

√ 74% of treatment students earned a postsecondary credential, versus 51% for a matched comparison group.
√ Treatment students were eight percentage points more likely to be retained into the next semester, and seven percentage points more likely to be retained one year later, compared to a matched comparison group.
√ 45% of treatment students who were unemployed at the start of their program had gained employment one quarter after program exit, compared to 37% for a matched comparison group of non-incumbent workers.
√ Treatment students who were incumbent workers were six percentage points more likely to experience quarterly earnings gains following program exit, compared to a matched comparison group of incumbent workers.

In short, providing support services for healthcare students generates benefits for students, colleges, and employers—suggesting that this approach to enhanced education and training should be an essential aspect of institutional reform efforts with potential replicability to sectors beyond healthcare.

By investing in academic and non-academic support services, colleges can increase the number of students with the skills needed to enter the labor market prepared for employment and upward mobility; while enhancing their revenue through improved institutional retention and completion rates. Moreover, these supports help colleges better serve adult students who need additional skills and re-training, and who reflect an increasingly diverse pool of potential students and workers.

Derek V. Price

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