Higher education experts say the report is timely and useful given the increased focus being placed on community colleges to help cultivate skilled labor.
“This is an important report,” said Richard Kahlenberg, senior fellow at The Century Foundation. “Community colleges are being asked to do more than ever before, and CCCSE outlines some very promising practices.”
Kay McClenney, director of CCCSE, says the report is meant to help institutions examine their practices in order to get better at retaining and graduating more students.
“What we’re trying to do is provide information that is both useful and actionable for the community college,” McClenney said. “Community colleges nationally are at an important juncture.
“Within an environment of really constrained financial resources, community colleges are asking themselves: How can we get better results with our students? What is it we should be doing more of, particularly when we have to make choices in tight budgets?”
One impetus behind the report is to demonstrate how some colleges have already embarked upon efforts to get better results with their students.
Among other things, the CCCSE report highlights practices that range from alert systems and intervention for at-risk students to accelerate or fast-track developmental education to academic goal-setting and planning.
One unique feature of the report is it combines data from some of the center’s other surveys of students and faculty to help uncover areas where students and faculty have differing views of the extent to which something is or isn’t being done.
