Discusses how students can maximize their community college education whether they are planning to transfer to a four-year school or are looking for an edge in the job market.

A comprehensive, student-centered reading and study guide instructors and students can use in a college success course.

This book is a co-publication with CASE.Fundraising Strategies for Community Colleges is a hands-on, step-by-step guide to building a million-dollar-a-year development office.Community colleges educate nearly half the undergraduates in America yet receive as little as two percent of all gifts to higher education. Private philanthropy is now essential to the mission of community colleges. In order to gain a fair share, community colleges can rely on this book to deploy strategies effectively used by 4-year colleges. The author, Steve Klingaman, has raised over $40 million dollars for two-year and four-year colleges over a 25-year development career.With its emphasis on planning the work and working the plan, Fundraising Strategies for Community Colleges offers practical advice and concrete steps on how to build a strong advancement team with robust Annual Fund, grants, major gifts, planned giving programs.Topics include:* Strategies used at one two-year college that raised $50 million over ten years* 75 boxed tips on the details that matter most* How to create an institutional commitment to advancement* How to enhance the advancement function* How to build an effective foundation board that gives* How to grow the Annual Fund with sustainable, repeatable gifts* Secrets top universities use to close major gifts* Continuous quality improvement techniques to improve results year after year.Fundraising Strategies for Community Colleges is the only comprehensive development guide to focus on community college fund raising. Written for development professionals, college presidents, board members, trustees, faculty leaders, and other college leadership, this book is an essential, practical guide that fills a critical gap in the market.

Bookstore shelves are crowded with books offering advice to college students, yet—astonishingly—none of these books offer needed advice to the majority of college students in the United States … those attending community college. Of the approximately 21 million full- and part-time college students, 11 million attend community colleges. The Community College Guide aims to help fill this huge gap. The authors of this book have decades of experience between them as professors and administrators in both two-year and four-year colleges, have written numerous books for a general readership and thoroughly understand what community college students need to know to succeed in their college careers. From how to apply to community colleges to what to expect from your courses, from the truth about what you'll pay to actual financial aid opportunities, The Community College Guide offers a wealth of information for the millions of American students who desire higher education at the community level.

Maximize your college experience. Follow the track that costs less and pays more. Whether you're looking to transfer to a four-year school or you want an edge in the job market, community college could be your key to success. The question is: How can you make community college work to your advantage? The Community College Advantage: Your Guide to a Low-Cost, High-Reward College Experience is the first community college strategy guide focused on maximizing your college experience. With helpful tips and worksheets, you'll be prepared from the minute you set foot on campus. Optimize your time in community college. Uncover secrets to making the most of your classes, teachers, and peers. Transfer to your dream school. Follow a step-by-step guide to the transfer process and obtain access to the best colleges in the nation. Gain life skills that prepare you for the real world. Apply these tips and techniques to your life after college and see all your hard work pay off.

In the United States, 1,200 community colleges enroll over ten million students each year—nearly half of the nation’s undergraduates. Yet fewer than 40 percent of entrants complete an undergraduate degree within six years. This fact has put pressure on community colleges to improve academic outcomes for their students. Redesigning America’s Community Colleges is a concise, evidence-based guide for educational leaders whose institutions typically receive short shrift in academic and policy discussions. It makes a compelling case that two-year colleges can substantially increase their rates of student success, if they are willing to rethink the ways in which they organize programs of study, support services, and instruction. Community colleges were originally designed to expand college enrollments at low cost, not to maximize completion of high-quality programs of study. The result was a cafeteria-style model in which students pick courses from a bewildering array of choices, with little guidance. The authors urge administrators and faculty to reject this traditional model in favor of “guided pathways”—clearer, more educationally coherent programs of study that simplify students’ choices without limiting their options and that enable them to complete credentials and advance to further education and the labor market more quickly and at less cost. Distilling a wealth of data amassed from the Community College Research Center (Teachers College, Columbia University), Redesigning America’s Community Colleges offers a fundamental redesign of the way two-year colleges operate, stressing the integration of services and instruction into more clearly structured programs of study that support every student’s goals.

This book brings together a collection of chapters with different research designs that explore the research, practice, and policies of community colleges. The chapters in this book are the result of the graduate students and their faculty mentor's scholarly work, and a rigorous special issue's peer review process. Furthermore, this book offers recommendations on how to mentor graduate students, in the absence of research and mentorship on how to publish for graduate students and practitioner-scholars, as well as recognizing that graduate programs and professional associations are important on the socialization of practitioner-scholars. Each book chapter addresses the implications for practice and future research, policy for community colleges, and recommendation for change indicated by the research results. Five broad research themes, higher education policy, leadership practices and roles, network community, student success, and technology, emerged from the empirical articles and critical reviews. A final chapter shares advice and lessons learned from the 30 authors and mentors. With the exception of Chapter 14, the chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Community College Journal of Research and Practice.