High Impact, Low Participation – Community Colleges

“Community colleges now have solid data on which strategies work best to help students get to graduation. While more colleges are using those techniques, far too few students are benefiting from them,” Inside Higher Ed reports.

“That has been a central theme of three studies from the Center for Community College Student Engagement, all of which seek to investigate the use of ‘high-impact practices’ to boost student success. The center released its third and final piece of the project on Thursday.

The new research adds to the case for 13 specific practices that work particularly well. Some can have a big impact on student retention and graduation rates.

Take the elimination of late registration for courses. The report found that students who reported registering for all courses before the meeting of the first class were four times more likely than their peers to stay enrolled between semesters and 11 times more likely to not drop out over a year.

Yet only 5 percent of students in the survey were required to register for all their courses before they began and actually did so.”