Changing Course: A Guide to Increasing Student Completion in Community Colleges

By: Thad Nodine, Andrea Venezia

Most community colleges, as currently designed, are not fully set up to maximize student completion rates. Instead, many students are overwhelmed with the array of academic sequences, workforce programs (career training programs), transfer options, and continuing education opportunities available to them — thus hindering their success in college.

This guide helps community college faculty, staff, and administrators rethink and redesign their systems, programs, and instruction to increase student completion.

Cowritten by WestEd's Andrea Venezia and Kathy Reeves Bracco, this guide:

• Identifies the goals of Completion by Design, an initiative that works with community colleges to increase completion and graduation rates for students, particularly those from low-income families
• Summarizes key design principles for improving completion rates

A companion document, Changing Course: A Planning Tool for Increasing Student Completion in Community Colleges, offers additional information and strategies.