College Student Success Readings: Home

Publisher blurb: This book helps educational leaders provide support for students who face significant barriers to college access, success, and retention. The authors offer research-based, practical guidance to allow readers to evaluate these issues within their local context, create and implement a plan of action, and sustain those efforts over time. Vignettes based on interviews with students experiencing homelessness and housing insecurity and contributions from practitioners are woven throughout the text to illustrate promising-practice recommendations.

Publisher blurb: Most community college leaders, administrators, faculty, and policymakers take pride in knowing that community colleges are the only postsecondary institutions that promise to educate and prepare all interested Americans. Yet, they are often publicly criticized by politicians, tax payers, and fellow educators. In America's Broken Promise, Dr. Eduardo Marti shows how community colleges have multiple, difficult, and often competing missions, particularly surrounding access and achievement rates. He reminds us that a very high percentage of students entering the community college "open door" are neither college ready nor intent upon graduation. He then critically traces the development of the unique role of community colleges, differentiates them from selective-admission institutions, shows their success creating open access environments, then maps out new ways these institutions can and must come closer to fulfilling their achievement promise.

Publisher blurb: In Demographics and the Demand for Higher Education, Nathan D. Grawe has developed the Higher Education Demand Index (HEDI), which relies on data from the 2002 Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) to estimate the probability of college-going using basic demographic variables. Analyzing demand forecasts by institution type and rank while disaggregating by demographic groups, Grawe provides separate forecasts for two-year colleges, elite institutions, and everything in between.

Publisher blurb: This book aims to deepen public understanding of the community college and to challenge our longstanding reliance on a deficit model for defining this important, powerful, and transformative institution.Featuring a unique combination of data and research, Sullivan seeks to help redefine, update, and reshape public perception about community colleges. This book gives serious attention to student voices, and includes narratives written by community college students about their experiences attending college at an open admissions institution. Sullivan examines the history of the modern community college and the economic model that is driving much of the current discussion in higher education today. Sullivan argues that the community college has done much to promote social justice and economic equality in America since the founding of the modern community college in 1947 by the Truman Commission.

Publisher blurb: Earning a college degree improves health and economic wellbeing. Thus, American taxpayers subsidize a majority of the cost of public colleges. At least half of all college students in the U.S. today attend two-year colleges; yet, fewer than half of these students achieve their educational goals. This book, written by an experienced community college teacher summarizes specific evidence-based methods to improve student learning and completion. This book summarizes: -student characteristics including socio-economic status, academic background, work/family commitments; instructional methods of work-pace, grading procedures, student practice opportunities, and feedback to students; institutional policies such as course scheduling, teaching loads, teacher training, availability of student services, commitment of administrators to using assessment to improve student learning outcomes.

"Do you feel prepared to initiate and facilitate meaningful, productive dialogues about race in your classroom? Are you looking for practical strategies to engage with your students? Inspired by Frederick Douglass's abolitionist call to action, 'it is not light that is needed, but fire' Matthew Kay has spent his career learning how to lead students through the most difficult race conversations. Kay not only makes the case that high school classrooms are one of the best places to have those conversations, but he also offers a method for getting them right."-- Publisher

Publisher blurb: In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year--nearly half of the nation's undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America's Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction.Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of "guided pathways"--clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students' choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost.

Publisher blurb: Teachin’ It! is a hands-on guide to cutting-edge research and classroom strategies that redress the graduation gap in community and open-access colleges. Drawing from the author’s 30 years in the education field as a math and college skills instructor, teacher educator, and researcher, this book describes an asset-based model that bolsters the success of all students, especially those underrepresented with 4-year degrees. These include students of color, first-generation college students, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities.

Publisher blurb:The 13 ideas in this book were identified by a group of national leaders as the most significant ideas impacting the contemporary community college. The book is designed for trustees, administrators, faculty, policy makers, legislators, and community leaders who want to be better informed about the issues affecting our students and our nation.

Publisher blurb: Does college still work? This books tells the story of students trying to find their way through, with hope, joy and frustration, through the application process and into college. Drawing on new research, the book reveals how the landscape of higher education has shifted in recent decades and exposes the hidden truths of how the system works and whom it works for.

Provides a wealth of information for college and university presidents and provosts, academic and student affairs professionals, faculty, and practitioners who seek to dismantle institutional barriers that stand in the way of achieving equity, specifically racial equity to achieve equitable outcomes in higher education. --Publisher blurb

Purchase funded by the CSCU Student Success Center

In The Debt Trap, Wall Street Journal reporter Josh Mitchell tells the untold story of the scandals, scams, predatory actors, and government malpractice that have created the behemoth that one of its original architects called a "monster." The tale begins in 1957 with the launch of Sputnik. Afraid that America was falling behind the Soviets in science education, Congress created the first major federal student loan program to enroll more students in college. What followed were a series of well-intentioned government actions that created a cycle of reckless lending and runaway tuition. --Publisher's blurb.