This infographic illustrates data obtained from the 2020 National Survey of Postsecondary Competency-Based Education.

AIR's Kathy Hughes coauthored a recent publication funded by Lumina foundation that seeks to better understand noncredit workforce education and its future. To assess the range of existing community college noncredit programs, interviews were conducted with administrators at 29 U.S. colleges. The data show that community college noncredit workforce education varies greatly across colleges, and many of its aspects are undergoing transformation.

This video is a recording of an in-person event focused on aligning expectations for new teachers between K–12 and educator preparation institutions.

This infographic presents promising strategies for addressing barriers to both entry and retention for women in pursuing such occupations. It suggests policymakers and practitioners’ strategies to address inequities in access to higher education and improve mobility among underserved women.

The College Completion Network conducted a systematic review of the research literature on advising policies, practices, and programs (hereafter referred to as “strategies”). The systematic review provides policymakers and practitioners with a summary of evidence for a wide range of advising strategies that have been the focus of research conducted during the past two decades. It also highlights high-quality evidence based on What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence reviews. This systematic review complements a recent WWC practice guide, Effective Advising for Postsecondary Students: A Practice Guide for Educators (Karp et al., 2021), which draws on reviews of research, the experiences of practitioners, and the expert opinions of a panel of nationally recognized experts to provide evidence-based recommendations to college practitioners.

From fall 2021 to summer 2022, the College Completion Network conducted virtual focus groups with administrators at 47 2-year and broad-access 4-year colleges with the goal of better understanding the advising policies, practices, and programs (hereafter referred to as “strategies”) that colleges use to support student success. Simultaneously, the network conducted a systematic review of the research literature on advising strategies, summarizing the evidence for a wide range of advising strategies that have been the focus of research conducted during the past 2 decades. This brief considers the findings from each study side by side, distilling gaps between policy and practice and research.

To better understand how colleges are using advising policies, programs, and practices to support student success, the College Completion Network conducted virtual focus groups with administrators at 47 colleges. College administrators can use the findings from this study to learn about approaches to advising other colleges are using, and the successes and challenges of implementation, and researchers who study advising and other student success initiatives can use the findings from this study to identify directions for future research.

This research seeks to understand the financial characteristics of HBCUs that enroll a large proportion of students who come from low-income families and how these characteristics influence student success in STEM. The study used secondary data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) to examine the financial metrics of HBCUs that are associated with the percent of students awarded Pell grants. The sample size consists of 84 four-year HBCUs that submitted financial information to IPEDS. Included in this sample are HBCUs that serve undergraduate students with active grants funded through the National Science Foundation Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program.

On February 23, 2022 the AIR Equity Initiative hosted the second in a series of equity-focused roundtable discussions. A panel was followed by a Q&A with experts who explored approaches to reducing bias and promoting diversity and inclusion within organizations and in grant-making and policymaking processes. The experts and AIR staff discussed how these approaches can enhance research and technical assistance and improve policy.