Giving Compass' Take:

• Madeline Brown and Lauren Eyster at Urban Institute highlight three community colleges that are accelerating student learning and increasing completion rates. 

• How can donors support initiatives to increase college completion rates in cities that are struggling to get students to apply for college?

• Read about the community college to the university pipeline. 

Community colleges and their students have a shared interest in accelerated learning: students can start working and earning money faster, and colleges can increase their completion rates.

Speaking at a series of panels in fall 2019 at the Urban Institute, community college officials from Ohio, Florida, and Nevada explained how their schools accelerate student learning.

Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio: Offering short-term certifications
Sinclair Community College is focused on competency-based programs that embed short-term certifications throughout their associate’s degrees. Its information technology (IT) programs were the first set of competency-based programs the college offered, in part because the state of Ohio has strong IT standards, which provided important guidance for the college.

Broward College in Fort Lauderdale, Florida: Mapping students’ experiences to credit
Broward College helps its students accelerate their learning by ensuring they are getting credit for any learning or work experience they have. Whether a student presents with an industry certification or career and technical education courses from high school, the college has articulation agreements to ensure students receive credit for these experiences.

Western Nevada College in Carson City, Nevada: Supporting credit accumulation
At Western Nevada College (WNC), faculty construct curriculum to ensure any credentials or courses can always be built into a longer-term degree.

For example, short-term credentials under 30 credits can accumulate into a 30-credit skill certificate, which can then stack in to a 60-credit associate’s degree and at least one 120-credit bachelor’s degree offered by WNC.

Read the full article about community college and graduation by Madeline Brown and Lauren Eyster at Urban Institute.