QEP Research Teams

CCRC’s 2015 book Redesigning America’s Community Colleges: A Clearer Path to Student Success catalyzed a national community college reform movement. Since its publication, hundreds of community colleges have sought to implement whole-college reforms using the guided pathways model outlined in the book, either on their own or as part of a national or state initiative. CCRC has studied the adoption, implementation, costs, and effects of these reforms at over 100 colleges and interacted with thousands of practitioners implementing guided pathways through institutes, webinars, and workshops. In the process, CCRC has deepened its understanding of how community colleges can improve students’ experiences and outcomes and advance educational equity through guided pathways reforms. This report describes how CCRC’s thinking about guided pathways has evolved in five areas: program organization and design, new student onboarding, remediation and academic support, ongoing student advising, and teaching and learning.

Social Justice and Closing the Achievement Gap: Closing the Achievement Gap has been an increasingly important topic as it relates to underrepresented minorities. Underrepresented minorities and women have had fewer advantages than their white counterparts in gaining access to the educational social contract. This paper is to argue the steps that have led to unmet access to educational achievement by underrepresented groups at community colleges. This paper includes examples of unfulfilled services of community colleges and cites STEM progress.

Achievement gaps increase income inequality and decrease workplace diversity by contributing to the attrition of underrepresented students from science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) majors. We collected data on exam scores and failure rates in a wide array of STEM courses that had been taught by the same instructor via both traditional lecturing and active learning, and analyzed how the change in teaching approach impacted underrepresented minority and low-income students. On average, active learning reduced achievement gaps in exam scores and passing rates. Active learning benefits all students but offers disproportionate benefits for individuals from underrepresented groups. Widespread implementation of high-quality active learning can help reduce or eliminate achievement gaps in STEM courses and promote equity in higher education.

In the United States, large, persistent gaps exist in the rates at which racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic groups complete postsecondary education, even when groups are equated on prior preparation. We test a method for preventing some of those gaps by providing individuals with a lay theory about the meaning of commonplace difficulties before college matriculation. Across three experiments, lay theory interventions delivered to over 90% of students increased full-time enrollment rates, improved grade point averages, and reduced the overrepresentation of socially disadvantaged students among the bottom 20% of class rank. The interventions helped disadvantaged students become more socially and academically integrated in college. Broader tests can now be conducted to understand in which settings lay theories can help remedy postsecondary inequality at scale.

Research has shown social class differences in undergraduate engagement, yet we know little about the reasons for these differences. Drawing on interviews and participant observation with undergraduates at an urban, public comprehensive university, this ethnographic study investigates the academic engagement strategies of students from different social class backgrounds during their first two years of college. I find that first-generation and middle class students expend strenuous efforts to succeed, with first-generation students employing independent strategies and middle class students employing interactive, as well as independent, strategies. But because middle class students have a broader repertoire of strategies, which include those that are visible and valued by university faculty and staff, they are advantaged in the college context, or field, relative to their first-generation peers. This research shows how culture in the form of social class shapes undergraduates' academic strategies and contributes to their unequal outcomes. It also points to the role of institutions in defining the implicit rules of engagement, such that middle class strategies of interaction are recognized and rewarded while first-generation strategies of independence are largely ignored.