Beyond Student Right-to-Know Data: Factors That Can Explain Community College Graduation Rates

Policymakers, educators, and researchers recognize the importance of community colleges as open door institutions that provide a wide range of students with access to college. At the same time, competing demands for the state funds that would support community colleges have resulted in reduced public allocations and higher student tuition fees. Understandably, therefore, both state policymakers and parents are increasingly focused on the returns to their public or private investments in education, and the outcomes of community college attendance are now under greater scrutiny. To facilitate the evaluation of the colleges, there are now available data, through the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act (1990), which amended the Higher Education Act, on every college’s graduation rate for fall semester cohorts of first-time, fulltime (FTFT) students in degree programs. This information is known as the Student Right-to-Know (SRK) data. A related public concern is how the outcomes of community college students can be improved. Therefore, attempts are now being made to clarify the way that specific students define success and to identify the college policies and practices that can promote success for all students. For some community college students, college completion, defined as earning a degree or certificate, is the appropriate measure of success. For other students, success is demonstrated by transferring to a baccalaureate institution. Still others are satisfied with completing courses that increase their knowledge or skill level in a particular area even though their educational experience is not considered successful as defined by traditional educational outcomes

The Characteristics of Occupational Students in Postsecondary Education

This Brief presents a profile of the enrollment, demographic, and educational characteristics, and the educational goals, of community college students in occupational programs. It compares their features with those of community college students in academic programs and with baccalaureate students. This analysis further considers the distinct features of occupational students enrolled in certificate degree programs. The Brief stands alone as a comparative description of these students, but also provides important background material for CCRC’s companion Briefs on postsecondary occupational students, Educational Outcomes of Postsecondary Occupational Students and Who Benefits from Postsecondary Occupational Education? Findings from the 1980s and 1990s

The Effects of Institutional Factors on the Success of Community College Students

Community colleges are the gateway to higher education for many students who would otherwise have limited access to college, particularly those who are from low-income households or are ethnic minorities, first generation college students, or immigrants. Yet only about one-third of all community college students receives any degree or certificate even eight years after initial college enrollment. And credit accumulation and completion rates are even lower for minority and low-income students. Meanwhile, community college student outcomes, as measures of college effectiveness, are of increasing concern for institutional accountability. The Bush administration and many legislators in Congress would like to hold postsecondary institutions to higher standards of accountability, just as they have done with elementary and secondary schools. Institutional reporting requirements to the Department of Education now include data for graduation rates overall and broken out by gender and race/ethnicity. More than half of all states take into account the performance of public colleges when determining higher education appropriations

Eosinophils Promote Effector Functions of Lung Group 2 Innate Lymphoid Cells in Allergic Airway Inflammation in Mice

BACKGROUND: Group 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s) are critical mediators of type 2 respiratory inflammation, releasing IL-5 and IL-13 and promoting the pulmonary eosinophilia associated with allergen provocation. Although ILC2s have been shown to promote eosinophil activities, the role of eosinophils in group 2 innate lymphoid cell (ILC2) responses is less well defined. OBJECTIVE: We sought to investigate the role of eosinophils in activation of ILC2s in models of allergic asthma and in vitro. METHODS: Inducible eosinophil-deficient mice were exposed to allergic respiratory inflammation models of asthma, such as ovalbumin or house dust mite challenge, or to innate models of type 2 airway inflammation, such as inhalation of IL-33. Eosinophil-specific IL-4/13-deficient mice were used to address the specific roles for eosinophil-derived cytokines. Direct cell interactions between ILC2s and eosinophils were assessed by in vitro culture experiments. RESULTS: Targeted depletion of eosinophils resulted in significant reductions of total and IL-5 CONCLUSION: These studies demonstrate that eosinophils play a reciprocal role in ILC2 effector functions as part of both adaptive and innate type 2 pulmonary inflammatory events

The Characteristics of Occupational Sub-Baccalaureate Students Entering the New Millennium

This report is a quantitative analysis of postsecondary occupational education students using national data sets. It provides a detailed description of the demographic characteristics, enrollment patterns, and goals of sub-baccalaureate occupational students in comparison to both academic sub-baccalaureate students and baccalaureate students. It is the first of three reports submitted as part of the National Assessment of Vocational Education (NAVE), called for by the Carl D. Perkins Vocational and Applied Technology Act of 1998. These reports contribute to the purpose of NAVE to help Congress improve occupational and technical education in the United States by providing a descriptive and analytic understanding of occupational students within the broader context of all postsecondary education

Is Student-Right-to-Know All You Should Know? An Analysis of Community College Graduation Rates

Over the last decade, policymakers, educators, and researchers have increasingly sought to understand community college policies and practices that promote students' success. This effort has been partly driven by an increased emphasis on outcome accountability, but it has also promoted a productive discussion about improving institutional performance. The research reported here has two related goals. One goal is to work towards strengthening the ability to assess and compare institutional performance. We thus have developed a model that can be used to adjust simple graduation rates for institutional characteristics, such as student composition, college resources, size, and location, all of which might influence those rates. Our long-term goal is to understand how to improve student outcomes, so the paper also uses the model to measure the effect of those institutional characteristics on graduation rates. We use data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) surveys, applying a weighted least- squares procedure for grouped data to estimate an institutional-completion rates model. This analysis confirms several hypotheses about institutional determinants of graduation rates at community colleges. Our results indicate a consistent negative relationship between enrollment size and completion. Additionally, colleges with high shares of minority students, part-time students, and women have lower graduation rates. A final significant finding among institutional characteristics is that greater instructional expenditures are related to a greater likelihood of graduation. The method developed here can be used to better assess the performance of community colleges

Community College Student Success: What Institutional Characteristics Make a Difference?

The goal of this study is to determine the institutional characteristics that affect the success of community college students as measured by the individual student probability of completing a certificate or degree or transferring to a baccalaureate institution. While there is extensive research on the institutional determinants of educational outcomes for K-12 education and a growing literature on this topic for baccalaureate institutions, few researchers have attempted to address the issue for community colleges. Using individual level data from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) and institutional level data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS), we address two methodological challenges associated with research on community college students: unobserved institutional effects and attendance at multiple institutions. The most consistent results across specifications are the negative relationship between individual success and larger institutional size, and the proportion of part-time faculty and minority students

Improving Student Attainment in Community Colleges: Institutional Characteristics and Policies

Community colleges are a crucial point of access to higher education for low-income, minority, and other underserved students. Indeed, these groups are overrepresented (with respect to their share of undergraduate enrollment) in two-year and less-than-two-year postsecondary institutions. The community college access mission is built on low tuition, convenient location, flexible scheduling, an open-door admissions policy, and programs and services designed to support students who may have various socio-economic and academic barriers inhibiting postsecondary success. If community colleges—or similar institutions—were not available, many of these students would not have an opportunity to attend higher education. While access to community colleges is an important first step for a wide variety of students, they must also be successful after they have enrolled. Unfortunately, many students never finish a degree. For example, only 36 percent of students who enrolled in a community college as their first postsecondary enrollment in the 1995-96 school year had completed a certificate, associate, or bachelor’s degree within six years. Low-income, minority, and first-generation college students all have even lower six-year completion rates. Although many students can benefit from a community college education even if they do not complete a degree or certificate, community college faculty and administrators would all like to see completion rates rise. This report is part of a broad initiative funded by the Lumina Foundation for Education. The initiative, Achieving the Dream: Community Colleges Count, will initially work with 27 community colleges in five states to help them increase retention, completion, and success for low-income students, students of color, first-generation college students, and other underserved groups

Day and night surgery: is there any influence in the patient postoperative period of urgent colorectal intervention?

Background Medical activity performed outside regular work hours may increase risk for patients and professionals. There is few data with respect to urgent colorectal surgery. The aim of this work was to evaluate the impact of daytime versus nighttime surgery on postoperative period of patients with acute colorectal disease. Methods A retrospective study was conducted in a sample of patients with acute colorectal disease who underwent urgent surgery at the General Surgery Unit of Braga Hospital, between January 2005 and March 2013. Patients were stratified by operative time of day into a daytime group (surgery between 8:00 and 20:59) and the nighttime group (21:00–7:59) and compared for clinical and surgical parameters. A questionnaire was distributed to surgeons, covering aspects related to the practice of urgent colorectal surgery and fatigue. Results A total of 330 patients were included, with 214 (64.8 %) in the daytime group and 116 (35.2 %) in the nighttime group. Colorectal cancer was the most frequent pathology. Waiting time (p?<?0.001) and total length of hospital stay (p?=?0.008) were significantly longer in the daytime group. There were no significant differences with respect to early or late complications. However, 100 % of surgeons reported that they are less proficient during nighttime. Conclusions Among patients with acute colorectal disease subjected to urgent surgery, there was no significant association between nighttime surgery and the presence of postoperative medical and surgical morbidities. Patients who were subjected to daytime surgery had longer length of stay at the hospital

Mononuclear cell composition and activation in blood and mucosal tissue of eosinophilic esophagitis

IntroductionEosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is a chronic, inflammatory, antigen-driven disease of the esophagus. Tissue EoE pathology has previously been extensively characterized by novel transcriptomics and proteomic platforms, however the majority of surface marker determination and screening has been performed in blood due to mucosal tissue size limitations. While eosinophils, CD4+ T cells, mast cells and natural killer (NK) T cells were previously investigated in the context of EoE, an accurate picture of the composition of peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) and their activation is missing.MethodsIn this study, we aimed to comprehensively analyze the composition of peripheral blood mononuclear cells and their activation using surface marker measurements with multicolor flow cytometry simultaneously in both blood and mucosal tissue of patients with active EoE, inactive EoE, patients with gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and controls. Moreover, we set out to validate our data in co-cultures of PBMC with human primary esophageal epithelial cells and in a novel inducible mouse model of eosinophilic esophagitis, characterized by extensive IL-33 secretion in the esophagus.ResultsOur results indicate that specific PBMC populations are enriched, and that they alter their surface expression of activation markers in mucosal tissue of active EoE. In particular, we observed upregulation of the immunomodulatory molecule CD38 on CD4+ T cells and on myeloid cells in biopsies of active EoE. Moreover, we observed significant upregulation of PD-1 on CD4+ and myeloid cells, which was even more prominent after corticosteroid treatment. With co-culture experiments we could demonstrate that direct cell contact is needed for PD-1 upregulation on CD4+ T cells. Finally, we validated our findings of PD-1 and CD38 upregulation in an inducible mouse model of EoE.DiscussionHerein we show significant alterations in the PBMC activation profile of patients with active EoE in comparison to inactive EoE, GERD and controls, which could have potential implications for treatment. To our knowledge, this study is the first of its kind expanding the multi-color flow cytometry approach in different patient groups using in vitro and in vivo translational models