Community colleges play a critical role in community and economic development by providing accessible education tailored to local workforce needs, particularly for historically underrepresented students. However, despite the potential benefits of work-based learning, many community college students struggle to access these opportunities due to challenges like balancing work, caregiving responsibilities, and limited paid internships.

To better understand the challenges and opportunities facing community colleges that want to expand apprenticeship offerings, New America conducted a year-long study. We created an advisory committee to guide this work and spoke to apprenticeship, workforce development, and community college leaders about the community colleges role in expanding apprenticeship.

The current attention being paid to rural America by many leaders in the world of philanthropy continues to swirl in the crosscurrents of interests that first emerged during the dawn of institutional philanthropy more than 100 years ago. While many would argue that there has been historic underinvestment in rural people and places, there is a significant history of philanthropically supported rural innovation that continues today with a dynamic group of new funders, leaders and advocates.

Open educational resources (OER) are openly licensed, no-cost educational materials, such as free online textbooks, that have been shown to have a variety of benefits for students and their learning.

As the title suggests, Making the Case for Open Educational Resources is designed to assist OER advocates in their work to craft persuasive presentations, publications, and arguments as they promote OER.

To better understand the factors accelerating CEO turnover in California and the ways in which this might be prevented in the future, ResearchEd collaborated with the Community College League of California (CCLC) to conduct one-on-one interviews, distribute surveys to CCC CEOs and Board of Trustee members, and conducted focus groups with these stakeholders from January to March 2022.

The purpose of this report is to document the Powered By Publics (PxP) network's progress and share examples of innovation emerging from cross-campus collaborations.
PxP initiative has been an ambitious undertaking from the beginning, aiming to produce hundreds of thousands more undergraduate degrees and halving equity gaps for low-income, minoritized, and first-generation students by 2025. APLU has collected student performance data from the 127 participating institutions over the past three years--in 2020, 2021, and 2022--to evaluate progress toward these stretch goals.

Winooski City and School District Audit Winooski is one of the most racially diverse municipalities in Vermont and contains one of the only majority-minority school districts in the state. The City of Winooski and the Winooski School District partnered with ResearchEd and Opportunity Consulting to conduct an equity audit and explore areas where experiences in the City and WSD are inequitable and find the opportunities to adopt equity-focused policies and practices to address these inequities. ResearchEd contributed research, writing, and data analysis, for this report.

 To explore the role that community colleges play in supporting the vitality of rural communities, from October 2019 to December 2020 ACCT visited rural campuses and conducted interviews virtually and in person with over 500 individuals across five states.

Default does not impact all borrowers equally: students who have stopped out or who have completed some college credits but have not yet earned a degree or credential are especially at risk for default. Non-traditional age students, students of color, and low-income students are also at greater risk. Defaulting on a loan carries several adverse financial consequences, wage garnishment, property liens, credit score damage, and litigation from the loan servicer. In several states, professional licenses and driver’s licenses may be revoked. Analysis of data from Valencia College demonstrates that loan defaults and their harsh penalties are also associated with poorer academic outcomes.

Community colleges provide an important entry point on the pathway to graduate and professional degree completion. Nearly 20 percent of 2016-17 master’s degree earners originally entered higher education in a community college, and nearly 12 percent earned an associate degree from a community college.

The dawn of the twentieth century marked an era of progressivism in education. This period brought about some positive advancements in the way people thought about teacher preparation and pedagogy, but it also marks a period during which teachers lost autonomy in the classroom. During this period there were two types of progressive reformers, those who attempted to change pedagogical practices, and those who were interested in changing the organization and functions of institutions.

The Federal Work- Study program was initially created to provide an opportunity for these low-income students to offset costs while in school by working. Federal Work-Study participants are 3.2 percentage points more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree than nonparticipants, and research shows that the outcomes for participants who are low income and/or attend public institutions are even better.

How much do live college mascots cost, and who is paying for them? A report in the Chronicle of Higher Education found that in the past five years public Division I universities have charged close to $10 billion in mandatory student fees in order to subsidize sports programs.

Last year’s collapse of the Corinthian Colleges made widely known what was already clear to many: the current post-secondary accreditation system is failing. Accreditation agency standards are neither rigorous nor consistent, and the entire process lacks transparency. Accreditors set standards for student achievement, and only institutions that meet these standards and maintain accreditation are eligible for the approximately $150 billion in student aid that is distributed by the federal government each year.

Few pieces of federal legislation have done more to open the doors of opportunity to millions of Americans than HEA. The law has benefitted generations of students who might not otherwise have afforded college. It has also benefitted our democracy and economy, providing the basis for a highly educated citizenry and workforce.