Beyond Financial Aid: How Colleges Can Strengthen the Financial Stability of Low-income Students and Improve Student Outcomes

Completing education beyond high school is essential to Americans' well-being and economic success. But rising costs and inadequate financial resources hinder too many students from earning postsecondary credentials. This guidebook identifies six key strategies for improving services for low-income students. The report showcases promising approaches that colleges and universities are already employing, and offers these ideas as guides for all institutions. It also features an institutional self-assessment designed to help postsecondary institutions determine their effectiveness in serving low-income students and take steps toward improving their practices

Principles of Redesign: Promising Approaches to Transforming Student Outcomes

Community colleges across the country are working hard to help their students succeed. With increasing demands for accountability from the public and state governments, many colleges are feeling the pressure to make changes—now. Even more importantly, practitioners want their students to be successful so they can reap the benefits of their educational achievements: associate’s degree holders earn 33% more than those with a high school diploma and bachelor’s degree holders earn 70% more. Many colleges have been frustrated with the limited results stemming from past efforts to promote student success. With new approaches to improvement emerging and waning every few years, and expanding expectations contrasting with shrinking college budgets, many leaders and practitioners have become rightfully skeptical of the very idea of “change.” Too often, community colleges have begun to feel like enormous battle ships— no matter who is in charge and what changes are made, the ship is too big to move more than a degree or two from its original course. In the face of these challenges, this guide offers a distillation of eight core principles of redesign that any community college leader or practitioner can use to begin thinking about change through a different lens. Based on research and practice conducted and observed by organizations such as Community College Research Center (CCRC), Jobs for the Future (JFF), WestEd, Public Agenda, the Research and Planning Group for California Community Colleges and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, these principles reflect a fresh approach to thinking about student outcomes: one that looks at the institution from the students’ perspective and asks colleges to align structures, systems, programs and services in a coherent way

Nuances of Completion: Improving Student Outcomes by Unpacking the Numbers

“Accountability” is one of most loaded terms in education today. State governments, students, parents and taxpayers are demanding to know whether public education institutions are spending their money wisely and producing results. In response, colleges are investing enormous amounts of time, energy and resources in trying to increase the number of certificates and degrees awarded and transfers achieved. Increasingly, “completion” numbers often become the litmus test for the success or failure of an entire institution. Amidst this frenzy of activity to improve student completion rates, few colleges have had time to “unpack” the numbers and examine the student experiences being represented by these figures. No matter how big or small, each and every community college serves a diverse group of students with a broad range of backgrounds, talents and goals. These students have not only widely varied starting points and end goals, but also varied pathways to completion. How can colleges better understand the factors that affect diverse students’ ability to achieve completion

Understanding The Student Experience Through The Loss/Momentum Framework: Clearing the Path to Completion

Why do so many students struggle to complete their educational goals in a timely manner, or at all? As we can see from Sarah’s story, students who are motivated and excited about college are often derailed in their quest for credentials or transfers. While Sarah’s life outside of school sometimes gave her a raw deal, she also encountered a number of obstacles just trying to move through the institution and achieve her goals. Across the nation, community colleges are exploring how they can align their systems, programs and services to best meet student needs and help them to succeed in this global economy. In today’s economic climate, community colleges are one of the most essential resources for low-income Americans seeking a better life. At the same time, colleges are facing disheartening educational outcomes for the students they want to help most. Across the country, schools have poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into new initiatives and interventions that have promised to turn things around for their students, only to find that limited, if any, progress has been made. In the face of these stubbornly low credential attainment and transfer rates, paired with tapped-out community college budgets, it is vital that college practitioners find a fresh way of building student success