ABSTRACT

What Community College Management Practices are Effective in Promoting Student Success? A Study of High- and Low-Impact Institutions

This study seeks to identify  management practices of community colleges that are effective in enabling their students to succeed in postsecondary education. The study was conducted by the Community College Research Center (CCRC) through a partnership with the Florida Department of Education.

Using transcript-level data on 150,000 first-time community college students and a regression methodology, the Community College Research Center (CCRC) estimated the effect that each of the 28 Florida community colleges has on the probability of its students’ achieving a successful outcome, after controlling for characteristics of the individual students. This effect can be seen as a measure of value added – the impact that a college has on its students’ educational success, independent of student characteristics. CCRC ranked the colleges according to their estimated effects on student success, paying particular attention to institutional differences in success rates among African American and Latino students.

CCRC used these rankings along with descriptive statistics on each institution to select six colleges for field research: three that have higher impacts on the chances of success for students of color and three that have lower impacts. The field work explored institutional policies, practices and cultural characteristics to determine why some colleges had a greater net effect on student success than did others.

What Community College Management Practices are Effective in Promoting Student Success? A Study of High- and Low-Impact Institutions  (Full Report)

What Community College Management Practices are Effective in Promoting Student Success? A Study of High- and Low-Impact Institutions  (Executive Summary)

Community College Management Practices That Promote Student Success  (Brief)