Expanding Access, Unequal Gains: Direct Enrollment, Adult Learners, and Equity in Community College Mathematics

• In Event: Navigating Higher Education Opportunity: From Affirmative Action Reform to Community College Pathways

Abstract

Community colleges across the United States have increasingly replaced developmental prerequisite sequences with Direct Enrollment models that place students directly into college-level coursework, with or without co-requisite support. While this reform has gained widespread adoption, existing research documents only average effects and largely excludes adult learners—a population explicitly targeted by many Direct Enrollment policies yet conspicuously absent from the literature. As federal data infrastructure supporting higher education research faces growing instability, rigorous state-level studies of this population are both timely and essential.

This study estimates the causal impact of Direct Enrollment on adult learners' access to and success in college-level mathematics, and examines how effects vary by race/ethnicity and gender. Using longitudinal administrative records from the Virginia Community College System (VCCS) spanning 2014–2021 entry cohorts (N ≈ 88,000 adult learners)—state-held data unaffected by recent federal data disruptions—we exploit the staggered, college-level adoption of Direct Enrollment as a source of quasi-experimental variation. A difference-in-differences design with two-way fixed effects for college and entry cohort yields causal estimates across the full academic pipeline: mathematics enrollment, course passage, persistence, credits earned, and credential completion.

On average, Direct Enrollment increases adult learner access to college-level mathematics by 2–3 percentage points and improves passage rates by approximately 2 percentage points. However, these aggregate gains conceal profound heterogeneity. Benefits are concentrated among White, Asian, and male students, while Latinx adult learners' experiences statistically significant decline across all measured outcomes—enrollment, passage, persistence, and credits earned. Effects for Black adult learners are largely null. No group demonstrates consistent improvements in credential completion, raising questions about the durability of early-stage gains.

Drawing on self-determination theory, behavioral decision theory, and administrative burden scholarship, we argue that choice-based placement reforms may widen inequality when students face unequal capacity to navigate institutional choice architectures—a condition acutely salient for adult learners balancing work and family demands. Expanding access alone is insufficient for achieving equitable outcomes. State policymakers scaling Direct Enrollment must pair reform with structured advising, clear default pathways, and differentiated supports for Latinx and adult student populations. This study extends Direct Enrollment research to an understudied but policy-critical population and provides the first causal evidence that well-intentioned access reforms can produce deeply inequitable distributional consequences.

Data note for reviewers: This study relies exclusively on administrative records maintained by the VCCS. These data are not federal in origin and are not affected by recent federal data embargoes, funding disruptions, or dataset discontinuations. All analyses were conducted under a data use agreement with VCCS. Complete results are available for presentation.

Authors

• Daman Chhikara, University of California Irvine
  Non-Presenting Co-Author

• Florence Xiaotao Ran, University of Delaware
  Presenting Author

• Di Xu, University of California Irvine
  Non-Presenting Co-Author