The Community College Research Center (CCRC) at Teachers College, Columbia University, plans to use a three-year $5 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to research what types of programs can boost graduation rates for low-income community college students.
The research will support the foundation’s Postsecondary Success initiative, launched last year, which intends to double the number of low-income students who earn a postsecondary degree or credential by age 26. CCRC will produce a set of concrete recommendations for the initiative by early 2012.
College enrollment rates have grown rapidly over the past 40 years, but completion rates haven’t kept pace. "Getting students to college isn’t enough – we must help them get through college," said Hilary Pennington, director of postsecondary success at the Gates Foundation.
Several new studies will examine strategies to increase community college completion rates for low-income young adults. These studies focus on promising but untested ideas, including: assessing incoming students’ needs, not just their level of academic skills; offering high-quality and engaging online courses; and providing underprepared students with "student success" courses and other non-academic supports.
The education gurus at CCRC may want to study some of the most successful students from community colleges to see what works.
The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation has awarded scholarships to 30 of the nation’s best community college students so they can transfer to four-year colleges and universities to complete their bachelor’s degree.
Recipients of the scholarships this year include a single, working mother; the first person in her family to go to college; a child of migrant workers; a future doctor from Cameroon; and a high-school dropout who wants to be an engineer.
Richael Young, the first member of her family to attend college and one of the scholarship winners, said she made "a conscious decision to take advantage of every opportunity that presented itself to me." 
[...] ED | Program to study formula for community college success (Daily Tell, 7/8) - funded by Gates [...]
[...] article, from The Daily Tell, briefly describes some of the ideas CCRC plans to test. It also mentions scholarships offered by [...]