The Completion Agenda in Community Colleges: What It Is, Why It Matters, and Where It's Going [Paperback]

This book is intended to improve understanding about the complex issues surrounding the national college completion agenda. By highlighting the origins of this agenda and the dilemmas and opportunities it creates for community colleges, The Completion Agenda in Community Colleges: What It Is, Why It Matters, And Where Its Going describes the many innovations underway nationally. The book is an effort to bridge gaps between practice, policy, and research to provide the reader with a holistic view of community college response to the completion agenda. While this agenda is a positive development it also raises some critical questions. What is the appropriate balance between open access and ensuring more students earn a credential? What can policymakers do to incent innovation among institutions without jeopardizing the strengths of community colleges? In an era of constrained resources, how can colleges improve outcomes when so many students enroll academically unprepared? And perhaps most importantly, how can we collectively increase these outcomes while also ensuring that the credentials attained are high quality and with labor market value?Dr. Christopher Baldwin has spent 15 years working at the national, state, and institutional levels to improved the outcomes of students in community colleges. He has played a leading role in several national initiatives designed to bring about institutional reform that will result in an increased number of community college students earning a credential with value in the labor market.

Dr. Baldwin writes cogently about the many dimensions of the challenge of how best to improve graduation rates at community colleges without sacrificing quality or ignoring the needs of students with low-income or low levels of college readiness. This book is recommended reading for anyone who wants to chart where weve been with the completion agenda, and contemplate the opportunities ahead for better helping all community college students aclÓ(