Community College Success Measurement: A New Approach

Community college students often have diverse backgrounds and goals. For this reason, it has always been a challenge to evaluate a community college’s success rate. In this episode of The Future of Education, Dr. Galen DeHay talks to Dr. Laura Ullrich, a senior regional economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, about the complex topic of measuring community college success. They discuss why the current metrics used by the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) are inadequate for truly evaluating a community college’s impact and Dr. Ullrich reveals some new insights from a pilot study of community colleges that used a broader and more nuanced definition of success. This episode gives listeners a deeper understanding of how higher education institutions are measured, the current challenges community colleges face, and the exciting opportunities that may arise from the Federal Reserve evaluating community colleges with a new lens.