Compressed Course Impacts on Student Success in California Community Colleges

• In Event: Structural Solutions for Student Success: The Impact of Alternative Course Models at Community Colleges

Abstract

Community colleges have experienced major declines in student enrollments since the pandemic, three times more than the enrollment losses in four-year colleges (National Student  Clearinghouse, 2021). California, with the nation’s largest community college system, saw sharp declines in community college enrollment – among the steepest drops relative to other states (Bulman & Fairlie, 2021; Linden et al. 2022; National Student Clearinghouse, 2021). In response to pandemic enrollment loss, the California Community College (CCC) system has expanded flexible curricular offerings, including compressed, weekend, and evening courses. Campus leaders hope these efforts will give students more opportunities to choose a curriculum that best suits their learning needs and preferences. The added flexibility may be particularly beneficial to students who manage responsibilities such as working and parenting while enrolled in college.   

California Community Colleges have made a particularly strong push towards compressed courses, defined as those that can be completed in nine weeks or fewer. By spring 2022, roughly a quarter of systemwide course enrollments consisted of compressed courses, compared to 15 percent prior to pandemic onset. One in six campuses now deliver a majority of their courses in compressed format, while others remain delivering primarily traditional-length courses.    

Prior research suggests that students could benefit from access to compressed courses through increased engagement and academic momentum, which, in turn, allows them to reach program requirement milestones more quickly (Attewell et al., 2012; Calcagno et al., 2006). Still, there is little existing evidence about how course length impacts student success (Bostwick et al. 2022). It is difficult to isolate the effect of enrollment in this particular course format from other factors because compressed courses may differ from long courses (e.g., they are more likely to be offered in particular subjects) and students who take compressed courses may differ from those who take long courses (e.g., they may tend to manage more working and parenting responsibilities).    

In this study, we leverage administrative data provided by the California Community College Chancellor’s Office (CCCCO) to estimate the effect of course length on student course completion. These data allow us to observe detailed information about students (e.g., age, gender, financial aid information) and courses (e.g., length, subject, modality) for all ~2 million CCC students over many academic years. Our empirical strategy uses variation within campus-by-course (i.e., campus courses offered in both compressed and long format) and variation within students (i.e., students who take both compressed and long courses) to estimate the effect of course length. This accounts for the fact that compressed courses may be concentrated in campuses and courses with average differences in student success outcomes, and that students enrolled in compressed courses may have average differences in outcomes than those who do not. We further isolate this compressed course effect by controlling for average differences over time and by course modality.

Authors

• Michal Kurlaender, University of California, Davis
  Presenting Author

• Robert Linden, University of California, Davis
  Non-Presenting Co-Author