The Richmond Fed has created a quantitative, consistent system for measuring community college outcomes.
Richmond Fed Survey of Community College Outcomes
The Survey of Community College Outcomes aims to better measure the way community colleges, which play a critical role in workforce and economic development, are serving their students and communities.
Community colleges play a major role in workforce and economic development, and at the Richmond Fed, we’re committed to understanding the economic impacts that important institutions like these have across the Fifth District. Unfortunately, existing data collected across states do not fully describe the range of positive outcomes achieved by community college students. Individual community colleges use many metrics to gauge their success, but these can vary from school to school, and from state to state, which makes it hard to compare across institutions and track outcomes consistently over time.
The Richmond Fed’s Survey of Community College Outcomes (SCCO) is a quantitative, consistent system for measuring community college outcomes that provides a fuller view of what success looks like for community college students — all community college students, including part-time students, high school enrollees and other non-traditional students—and will allow for better analysis on how student success contributes to local workforce and economic development.
The SCCO launched with a limited pilot in 2022, with results from the extended pilot released in November 2023. Visit the About the Survey page for more information on the survey and participating institutions, and bookmark the Community College Insights blog for regular updates and insights from the survey team.
See data and results from past waves of the survey.
Regular updates from the survey team, including deeper analysis of survey results and the economic impacts of community colleges.
Learn more about how your school can help us better understand how community colleges serve their students and their communities.
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Over the past year, we surveyed 63 community colleges in states across the Fifth District to better understand community college performance in our region and to offer a fuller, more representative metric for measuring the success of these important institutions.
Community College Insights Blog
Receive regular updates from the survey team on our Community College Insights blog, which features deep-dive analysis and commentary on results from the survey and the economic impacts of these important institutions.
Subscribe to our Around Our District email newsletter to receive new blog posts in your inbox or bookmark the page to check back often for updates.
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